ECG, 12 Lead, with Physician Reading

Details

A resting 12 lead electrocardiogram: ten electrodes producing twelve views of the heart's electrical activity, recorded over about ten seconds, at a paper speed of 25 mm per second and a calibration of 10 mm per millivolt. Two things belong on this page that are usually left off it. The first is what the test cannot do. A resting ECG is a ten second sample taken while you are lying still. A great many people with significant coronary disease have an entirely normal resting tracing, because at rest the heart is not being asked for anything. A normal ECG does not exclude heart disease and this listing will not let you believe it does. It is not a screening test for blocked arteries, and if somebody sells it to you as an annual reassurance, that is what they are selling, not what you are getting. The second is the machine's own printed opinion. Every modern ECG machine prints an automated interpretation across the top of the strip. It is a suggestion produced by pattern matching, and it is wrong often enough that no report here is released on the machine's word alone. A registered practitioner reads the tracing and writes the finding in plain words; the machine's line stays on the strip where you can see it, and where it disagrees with the reading, the disagreement is written down rather than quietly deleted. Something you can check yourself: the calibration pulse is the small rectangular step printed at the start of the strip, and it should stand 10 mm tall. If it stands 5 mm, the machine was set to half standard and every voltage on that tracing is half of what it looks like. It takes two seconds to check with the edge of a ruler and it is the single commonest way a tracing is misread. Vitals Clinic at A.P. Colony is not open. There is no practitioner in post, no premises registration and no appointment book, and this page does not pretend otherwise. What is written here is the specification: the qualification the role requires, the register the person must appear on, and the licence the premises must hold. Booking opens when those exist, and not before.

• Resting 12 lead ECG, 10 electrodes, 12 views, about a 10 second recording
• Paper speed 25 mm per second, calibration 10 mm per mV, both printed on the strip
• Read by a registered practitioner and written in plain words. Never released on the machine's automated line alone
• The original strip is yours to keep, with a digital copy
• A female attendant present for a female patient is a condition of the service, not a favour. Where one cannot be provided, the test is not done
• No commission on referring you onward, and no reflex repeat at every visit