Electrocardiogaffe

Because a physician has possessed himself of an electrocardiograph, a polygraph, an x-ray machine, a blood pressure instrument, or some ingenious form of stethoscope, it does not at all follow that he has become competent to judge a patient’s condition; not infrequently the very reverse is the case, for more often than not the limitations of these devices are far from being comprehended.Thomas Lewis, British Medical Journal 19191In 1912, the then British Medical Journal published Thomas Lewis’s work entitled “The electro-​cardiogram and its importance in the clinical examination of heart affections.”2 His recording apparatus was enormously cumbersome compared with today’s sleek machines (fig 1), but, remarkably, he could record amplitude in the range of 0.1 millivolts. Lewis’s classic representation of the normal PQRST complex is still instantly recognisable over a century later (fig 2).12bmj;379/dec19_16/e074083/F1F1f1Fig 1A subject connected for observation of the electrocardiogram.3bmj;379/dec19_16/e074083/F2F2f2Fig 2A normal trace on an electrocardiogram.2Current media representations…
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