EKG Then and EKG Now
Throughout the years,
there have been many advances made in the field of Electrocardiography
technology. EKG in 2016 is more
computerized, and the technological equipment is more compact today, but the
basic principles of the sophisticated medical test continue to hold true to
this day.
EKG, or ECG, is a world
wide medical test that checks for problems with the electrical activity of a
patient's heart. It is normally used as
the primary diagnosis for heart problems.
A group of ten electrodes that are attached to a patient's body on
specific limbs in order to detect electrical changes in the skin. The electrodes differentiate between a
healthy and an unhealthy one by movement.
The process of recording
the heart's rhythm in orderly progression, through electrical activity, has
been around for more than 144 years. It
was reported that Alexander Muirhead, a doctor at St. Mary's in London,
recorded his patient's heart beat. He
used a machine called Lippmann capillary electrometer. He connected the first commercial EKG device
to a projector. The projector then
traced the heart beat onto a photographic plate which was lastly transferred to
a toy train that allowed him to record the heart beat in real time.
It wasn't until 1901 that
Willem Einthoven, a 1924 Nobel Prize winner in the field of Medicine, improved
the methods used in heart medicine when he used a string galvanometer and
assigned letters to distinguish patters.
His invention provided the device with the sensitivity necessary to
diagnose a variety of cardiovascular disorders then and today.
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