Thread: I've been asked

what where you asked?

A layman's guide to understanding an EKG.

Anyone who has used an oscilloscope in work knows that there is no such thing as zero time. The ST segment of the trace should be almost straight vertical. While it can't be zero in time, it should be as close to zero as possible. (Zero time would be horizontal, left to right.) In electronic measurement we are dealing with sub, sub micro seconds for a single wave form. In the biological world dealing with a wave form every second or so. The vertical of a biological wave form might appear to zero in time displacement in the real world would be a gentle slope in the electronic world.

Rich, we call it an ECG here. An electrocardiagram.

Shame your diagnosis wasn't heeded.

mick

I'm quite intrigued by modern medical technology, to a bit of which I've been exposed lately. One of the things I had was a Doppler measurement of blood flow in my carotid arteries.
The physics involved in this is exactly the same as is used to measure river flows these days, although the frequencies involved are higher and the scale of everything is smaller when measuring blood flow. I was able to see the sonographer's screen, and I reckon with half an hour's training, we would each be able to use each other's equipment. Making sense of the data, of course, might take a bit longer.

Back in the early 1960s I was working as a wireman building cables for the Apollo program in Daytona Beach.
As a high school graduate and being just a bit smarter than the average bear, I could see an end to the employment as the contract with NASA had an end date. I realized that if I intended to support a family I needed to do something else. I enrolled in a 2 year vocational program at the local community college to study Electronics. Despite the fact that GE didn't really pay tuition (Too many hoops to jump through.) as they implied I got through about 18 months of 24. Yes, I could plot a load line for a vacuum tube (Something really useful in a word of transistors.) accurately. I was told of a job 200 miles south at RCA Computer Division in Palm Beach Gardens. During the interview I was told that he couldn't understand how I scored so high on their test. (95 out of 101) Because previously everyone from my school rarely scored above 50. They hired me. I was assigned to bringing up the central processing unit. (CPU) As further training I worked with a very, very old phart. In two or three weeks he taught me more than the 18 months. He taught me how and why a triggered oscilloscope (Tektronix) was the most valuable if you used it in triggered mode.

Like you said but using way too many words. . . . .

If you know how to use the test equipment, the world can be yours. Although sometimes understanding the world can take a bit longer.

Although I do not have the medical knowledge, just the rudimentary knowledge I have about the ECG (or EKG) has created some hilariously situations when conveyed to my Cardiologist. There was one incident that I conveyed to my Cardiologist that he laughed so hard that I thought he might have a heart attack. He was laughing so hard that he was crying.

Commercial Endorsement
I'm 79 this year. I get nothing for this.
Over the years I have used numerous oscilloscopes, none compare with Tektronix. The only limitation is your knowledge of what you are looking for.