Artiral fibrillation

[Foxyhole]

Hi does an ECG show irregular heart beats?

[stevejb1810]

Electrodes attached to various parts of your chest and sometimes legs measure the electrical impulses from your heart and plots them on a chart. The cardiologist will be looking for anything out of the ordinary

[Beffohol]

My ECG showed enough of an anomaly to warrant a 48hour monitor which then showed both a low heart rate with stoppages and a atrial flutter...I was given a pacemaker within a month and am now on beta blockers for flutter. Everything was very swiftly done... didn't really have time to panic 😀

[beardy_chris]

An ECG does show irregular heartbeats. If you look along the trace, the axis is time so, for a regular heartbeat, the squiggles should be equally spaced. With atrial fibrillation (is that what you meant?), the heartbeat is 'irregularly irregular', in other words, it's all over the place and the gaps between squiggles will be very variable.

cyberphysics.co.uk/graphics...

In more detail, the squiggles are known as a PQRST wave, the big waves are QRS. The P wave is a little bump before the big waves. With Atrial Fibrillation (AF), there is no P wave.

I'm not a medic but that's my layman's understanding.

[MichaelJH Heart Star]

I am no fan of the standard short duration resting ECG as it often only shows major issues. For AF and similar conditions either a 24hr, 48hr or 7 day is better and for CVD a stress one.

[BigT2013]

Yes a 12 lead ECG is the best and high-frequency 12 lead even more accurate.

Paramedics or hospital will usually do 12 lead it gives traces of electrical impulses from different points of your heart to identify where the issue is.

The different electrodes register on different fields on paper

[Hullensian]

Hi, my ECG showed a problem, but was not conclusive. I then had a 24 hour monitor (electrodes attached to my body and monitored for 24 hours). This showed further problems and two days later I had an echiogram which confirmed AF. I would insist on a 24 hour monitor because, as one blogger has said "not a fan of the 'normal' ECG" as my husband's showed no problem and it was only on my insistence that further tests were carried out that it was shown that he had had a heart attack. Trust your body and your instincts and insist.

[Foxyhole in reply to Hullensian]

I'm getting echocardiagram this week so might mention AF because I was told 6 years ago I had it but after my heart attack 4 weeks ago they said I didn't