Odd EKG

I go back to the dr tomorrow for an echo so hopefully I will get some answers..while I was at work today (I work in a hospital) I wasn't feeling very good so they took my blood pressure and it was 83/52 which is really low for me so they hooked me up to telemetry so they could see what kind of rhythem my heart was doing. It was very odd at times I had a P wave and other times I didn't it also looked like it was trying to do afib (controlled afib) my heart rate was between 60-75. Does anyone have any idea why my P wave would disappear then come back off and on. No one at work had ever seen anything like it!

2 Comments

Missing P wave

by ElectricFrank - 2012-10-24 02:10:24

Unless they hooked you up to a full multilead ECG you can have a wave that doesn't show. This one involves some electronic theory that may not be easy to understand. The signals from the heart happen in 3 dimensions. This also makes the electrical image we see on the surface of the body be 3 dimensional. It's called the vector orientation of the wave. This is why the standard hospital ECG has multiple leads attached to the chest, and why the size and shape of a P wave may look quite different on each lead trace.

So if something was happening in your heart conduction system that shifted the vector angle of the P wave it may seem to disappear on a simple telemetry monitor. Just a guess, but you could be in the process of developing one of the electrical blocks.

Hope I made some sort of sense,

frank

p wave

by kimbo - 2012-10-24 03:10:41

I have missing p waves not all the time and have wenckebach block not sure which one as there diff types iv also other rythem issues and awaiting a PM inplant. it might be worth telling your cardio.

reguards

kimbo

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