What is an "electrocardiogram" or "ECG"?
An electrocardiogram or ECG is a tracing made of the heart using twelve leads that will allow you to look at the heart electronically from various positions, and will help you to diagnose whether or not the heart is beating regularly or irregularly, it will also show you if there's been a heart attack and which part of the heart muscle has been damaged by a heart attack. It can tell you whether or not there is any chronic illness, especially in pulmonary medicine, we'll see what we call right ventricular hypertrophy or right axis deviation, where the heart muscle starts to swing it's main electrical events to the right side of the heart when it has always usually been to the left side where the bigger part of the muscle occurs. The electrocardiogram or ECG can demonstrate for us a lot of opportunity for improvement in the heart muscle. We can track it to see whether or not the heart muscle is getting better or worse as a result. The ECG is non-invasive, very inexpensive, and very commonly used. It can be electronically transmitted to many places throughout the United States so that if someone had a heart attack in one place, we can get that information readily in a remote place. So, using electrocardiograms or ECGs is a very important part of managing patients with lung disease and heart disease or a combination of the two.
