EKG is an electrocardiogram, a machine used to check on problems with your electrical activity with your heart. An electrocardiogram machine translates the heart’s electrical pattern into lines that specific professionals can read it. The first EKG was made by Willem Einthoven, a Dutch Java island (now called Indonesia) born citizen. Willem was born the 21st day of May 1860. His father, Jacob Einthoven, was born and educated in Groningen (Netherlands). His father was also medically related, as he was a medical officer in the Indies, and later on he became a doctor Semarang.
Willem lost his father at the age of six. Him and his mother were left out. He had two brothers and three sisters, so his mother had to struggle with six kids. After he graduated from secondary school, he intended to follow his father’s footsteps, and attended medical school. Although during the 1600s, William Gilbert started the word electric as in a static electrical pulse/ movement. To set up an individual to record a normal ECG by placing a white electrode on the wrist, a black electrode on the right ankle, and a red electrode on the lateral malleolus.
Plug the electrodes into port number two and choose lesson five and press setup. The biopac unit will check the leads and adjust the recording on the screen. When your patient is still, press the record button and the biopac unit will record for 60 seconds. If a problem occurs, press the redo button and record again. After the setup is complete, take the heart rate of the patient before each activity. The activities include sitting, lying down, biofeedback, autonomic response, and response to exercise.
During each activity, record an ECG and make a record of the intervals and amplitudes. During the early p-q intervals of an ECG, the atria and ventricles are relaxed while the ventricles are passively being filled with blood. At the latter end of the p-q interval, atrial contraction occurs forcing additional blood into the ventricles. At the beginning of the QRS interval on an ECG reading, the mitral valve closes and the ventricles are at EDV (135ml). During the QRS interval, ventricular contraction occurs increasing the pressure in the ventricle and the aorta.
When the pressure continues in the ventricle exceeds the pressure in the arteries, the aortic valve opens and blood is ejected. The increased pressure continues through the t peak. The ventricles are now in ESV (65ml) and the aortic valve is closed. Now the ventricles are relaxed causing pressure to fall and the cardiac cycle starts over again. This ECG reading was from a normal tracing. Keep in mind that an ECV is easy to obtain, but there are some subtleties that are very complex. Exercise increases heart rate by a process of sympathetic autonomic stimulation.
Sympathetic (adrenergic) nerves increase the excitability of the sino-atrial node and reduce the P-R interval . As exercise continues, the physiological changes in the body are continuously monitored by a number of physiological systems and the balance of activity of the sympathetic system (speeding up) and the parasympathetic system (slowing down) is constantly adjusted. When exercise is over, the heart rate does not drop immediately as the body has to undergo a period of re adaption to return to the resting state.
The adjustment in the autonomic system activity reflects this. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1924 was awarded to Willem Einthoven “for his discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram”. The following information is extra/student use or house use, basic information you should learn in school: Proficiency in electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation is an essential skill for medical students, house staff, and clinicians. However, medical school and postgraduate resources to develop and upgrade the necessary high level of “ECG literacy” are severely limited.
Further, current textbook and classroom instructional materials do not adequately integrate ECG interpretation into specific contexts where waveform findings must be correlated with other clinical data. We have begun to address the limitations in traditional approaches to ECG pedagogy by creating the infrastructure for a unique web-based tutorial. Pharmacology is also related to electrocardiography, as it shows in the following paragraph: this course (pharmacology and electrocardiography) is for healthcare professionals who participate in the management of cardiopulmonary arrest or other cardiovascular emergencies.
This includes personnel in emergency response, emergency medicine, intensive care and critical care units such as physicians, nurses, paramedics, and others who require this specialized knowledge for their job. By Mohammad Chenchar, The following is information from other sites as in stated in the beginning of the document, but put in other words and added or took off some.