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Your guide to ECG

A video by the British Heart Foundation on what to expect when you get to an ECG. This video is part of a free online course on heart health.
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This film will show you what to expect if you are having an electrocardiogram, often called an ECG. My name is Manzoor Sheikh. I live in Tooting. My age is 50 years. Two weeks ago, I had pain on my chest and my oncologist suggest me you go for a ECG, because I have history of high press cholesterol. My name is Tracy Carney. I’m a cardiographer. And I work at St. George’s Hospital in Tooting. I’m not nervous, because I’m very comfortable now. But I know if I have any kind of heart problems, so I need to know before I have any trouble. An ECG takes a trace of the rhythm and the rate of a patient’s heart beats.
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The ECG is pain free, and it takes approximately five minutes. We then ask them to take of the top half of their clothes, and then lay on the couch. They’re nice and relaxed. When the patient is on the couch, we attach the electrodes to the chest area, ankles, and the wrists. Then we attach the ECG leads to the electrodes. It is very important the patient lies still whilst doing the ECG so we can get an accurate recording. OK, that’s your ECG all done. And I’ll give you an ECG so you can take back for your doctor. Yeah, it is a comfortable test. No problem, any– no problem. And she done everything very brightly, and very nicely.
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Do you have an ECG coming up? Watch this video to find out what to expect.

You can find out more about ECG in Dr Sam Boateng’s video on Heart function in Week 1. Alternatively, if you’d like to investigate how an ECG can be used to detect abnormal heart rhythms, a major cause of sudden cardiac arrests, go to his video on Arrythmias shown earlier this week.

Reproduced with kind permission of the British Heart Foundation.

This article is from the free online

Heart Health: A Beginner's Guide to Cardiovascular Disease

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