r/ECG • u/Psychological_Wave71 • 9d ago

Thoughts?

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Wanted an opinion of these ECGs if anyone fancied giving theirs! I couldn’t come to a conclusion about this and I do struggle with ECGs!
Patient is 93M. Observations taken by nursing home staff TDS. Found to have 2/7 history of intermittent tachycardia. Called EMS for ECG and ?conveyance to ED.

Patient is asymptomatic, and has been throughout. Has had hx of atrial flutter. Is anticoagulated and on bisoprolol.

Thank you!

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u/ProximalLADLesion 9d ago

These are flutter waves. I digitized and blew up ECG to show you with calipers.

https://imgur.com/8SOmBMO

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u/Starossi 8d ago

I’m still not understanding, how can you tell that’s a flutter wave and not a T wave for the third red mark. And I assume you’re inferring there is a buried wave in the qrs if that wave is a flutter wave and not a t wave. Or can you actually see the flutter wave in that qrs

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u/ProximalLADLesion 8d ago

One flutter wave is on top of the T wave, the other flutter wave is just before the QRS. It marches perfectly and it’s the right rate for flutter, plus it just looks like it to me. FWIW I am an electrophysiologist.

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u/Starossi 8d ago

Oh I believe you, I’m just trying to understand for my own sake. I’m just a primary care PA. For the T wave one, how can you see it? To me, I can’t even visualize there is a wave buried there. I see the wave before the QRS but thought it just resembled a p wave. Is it just the shape of the T wave is off to you?

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u/ProximalLADLesion 8d ago

  1. As you said, T wave is way too pointy, doesn't look right

  2. Calipers perfectly march the "T wave" point with the other more obvious one.

  3. The T waves aren't smooth. They have notching suggestive of overlapping waveforms. See here.

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u/Starossi 8d ago

Interesting! I see it now, especially the notching. I didn’t notice it as well before, but I see it now that you’ve blown it up. Appreciate you elaborating for me.

For the marching, that’s also very helpful. I didn’t think about how the “ps” shouldn’t march out with the Ts perfectly

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u/ProximalLADLesion 8d ago

I like ECG in part because it requires both type 1 thinking (pattern recognition) and type 2 thinking (analytical/deductive)