Electrocardiogram interpretation help.

[marko220684]

Hi. I had a dull pain in the centre of my chest today which made my heart feel funny, so i went the hospital and had an ECG test carried out. when the nurse left the room i took some snaps of the test results and i have been left a bit confused by the results. it states i have an abnormal ecg and it will not rule out a heart attack. i asked the doctor about this, and he said it always happens and not to be concerned. he said it looks like i have a healthy heart, and my level of exercise activity and tolerance prompted him to tell me i have a good cardiovascular system. he said all this after i told him i have an anxiety and panic disorder. so maybe he was kid of being over kind, as to not worry me.

anyway i am 28. male. 6"2. and a healthy weight. i do not smoke or over indulge in junk or fast food.
I am going to link a photo of my ecg. hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me. also note i am a bit concerned about the V3 reading. there seems to be little to no lower spike, as compared to healthy ecg's that i have seen on google.

[ed34]

A lot of the problems are down to the software in later ECG machines. They try to save time by performing an evaluation of the readings, but they are a long way off of being accurate. This is why your Doctor said not to worry about it. If we believe half the interpretations given by machines, then half of us would be having unnecessary bypass surgery. There are many factors to take into account when analysing an ECG and the Human expert is still the best at this job. I remember three years ago, having an ECG while in the Cardiac ward. A Doctor came over and said it was abnormal, and he even showed me the area of the trace which was abnormal. Later that day my Consultant Cardiologist arrived and asked how I was feeling. I told him about my ECG and he retrieved it from my notes. I showed him the abnormality and he just frowned and said "Absolute nonsense, this is perfectly normal, I will be having words with that Doctor". I was worried about this, obviously differences of opinions always cause concern because you wonder who could be right or wrong. I looked at some traces on the internet and discovered that the small bleep on the trace should have been there and was not abnormal. It was the P wave. the depolarization of the Atria.

[Paderla Anitha, DNB]

Hello and hope you are doing well.

ECG is an electrical conduction study and it could sometimes give results, which need to be correlated clinically for a proper understanding. So, please don't worry, if your doctor has reassured you, its unlikely you have angina or cardiac pain. Do you have a positive family history for angina? If your symptoms of chest pain persist, a treadmill or an exercise ECG may help.

Hope this helped and do keep us posted.

[marko220684]

direct links to the pictures.

http://i46.tinypic.com/1444jv5.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/2mww0t4.jpg

http://i49.tinypic.com/10omp0j.jpg