Friday, December 12, 2008

I Can Name That Rhythm In 3 Complexes

http://www.nursingadvocacy.org/images/nursing_org/calnurses.gif

ER Murse directed me over to the CNA website (am I the only one who has a hard time seeing the abbreviation CNA as anything other than certified nursing assistant?), and when I got there, I was greeted with their logo, which was conveniently placed next to three EKG tracings... or at least I 'm going to assume that these are three separate EKG tracings, because if this is the same patient, then not only does he have a rate of like 40, but he is experiencing several serious problems simultaneously.

Obviously, they have taken the P waves and the T waves out so as to avoid distracting us with anything other than the QRS complexes.  That's good, because I didn't want to try to figure out what kind of heart block these patients are in.

But we can still try to figure out just what we are looking at, right?

The first patient has significant ST segment depression which would make me be a little concerned about a possible heart attack.  I think I would have to confirm this on another lead.

The second patient has a good flat isoelectric line, but the marked RSR' would have me wondering about a Right Bundle Branch Block.

The third patient also has an RSR' but this one appears to be more in line with a Left Bundle Branch Block.

In any case, I think that all of these patients need cardiac enzymes, a cardiology consult, and a life-saving 81 milligram aspirin, STAT.

Also, is it just me or is that an innapropriate use of a tilde?  I think that they really wanted a semi-colon here, but somebody said, "hey, wouldn't that squiggly line look a lot better there?  Kinda trendy, doncha think?"

4 comments:

Curdie said...

I hope no one important from CNA runs across this blog to chide you for picking apart their precious logo.

For some reason this post gave me a pang for my former life in analytical chemistry. You know, all the IR spectroscopy, NMRs...Gas Chromatography, Atomic Absorption, etc.

I even went and looked at some IR spectra for fun.

Tildes are trendy? Grammar Girl would faint. By the way, her podcast on asterisks is quite informative.

Anonymous said...

em-dash would be more appropriate. But then the art department gets ahold of it ...

Anonymous said...

Poor EKG tracing, have it re-run. It's like a graffiti version of an EKG. The logo is so Web 1.0, they need to update

Epijunky said...

You made me giggle, which is more than my poor family who is fed up with me bitching about such things has done lately.

We might be geeks. Seriously. Well, I might be at least.

Have a good weekend :)