An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a diagnostic tool that records the electrical activity of the heart, represented by the P wave, QRS complex, and T wave. It helps doctors determine heart health, muscle mass, blood flow, and the effects of medication.
An electrocardiogram (ECG) wave, sometimes called an electrocardiogram (ECG) wave, is a diagnostic tool used by doctors to analyze the electrical activity of the heart in order to determine the health of the heart. The heart contracts to push blood through the body, and the contraction is achieved through a series of electrical impulses generated by the heart. It is this electrical activity over time that is detected by an electrocardiogram and recorded on a graph as an ECG wave. EKGs are commonly seen in clinical and emergency room settings and usually have an alarm system to alert hospital staff of abnormal heart behavior.
The human heart consists of two atria and two ventricles forming four chambers. The heart works by pumping blood from outside the body into the atria, through the ventricles, and back into the body. During rest, the muscles in the heart chambers are polarized, which means they carry an electrical charge.
To generate the energy to contract, these muscles must “expend” their electrical charge and depolarize. The chambers then have to recharge in preparation for the next contraction, and this is referred to as repolarization. Depolarization and repolarization describe changes in electrical potential that are sensed by electrodes placed on the skin and represented by the ECG wave.
The ECG wave can be divided into the P wave, the QRS complex, and the T wave, and those waves—named arbitrarily after an alphabetic sequence of letters—repeat in that order for each heartbeat. The P wave occurs due to atrial depolarization, which initiates a wave of contraction to squeeze blood into the ventricles. To pump blood around the body, ventricular depolarization occurs. Atrial repolarization and ventricular depolarization occur almost simultaneously and are represented on an ECG wave by the QRS complex.
After blood has been ejected from the ventricles, the ventricles repolarize. This repolarization is represented by the T wave. Both the P wave and the T wave have positive – or upward – shifts on the graph, even though one wave represents a loss of charge and the other represents an increase in load.
From an ECG wave, doctors can learn a lot about heart health. It can be used to determine the muscle mass of the heart, whether the heart is beating properly, whether there is adequate blood flow through the heart, and even the effects of a drug or medications on the heart. Doctors analyze the P wave, QRS complex, and T wave by their size, order of occurrence, frequency, and shape to gather this information.
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