You
are in your office and are seeing a new patient. He is a 44 year
old male who hasn't seen a doctor in a while because he just got
insurance. He is here for a routine physical and would like his
cholesterol checked. When asking him about his medical history he
says that he has some condition that was diagnosed a long time ago
and his old doctor told him there was nothing to do about it. His
physical exam is normal. You decide to get an EKG to be complete.
Here is the EKG what is you interpretation?
Click
here for better quality image of EKG
Here
is a simple routine EKG which revealed a very important piece of
this patients history which he had obviously forgot. The EKG shows
the typical findings for WPW. There is a short PR interval, notice
in the leads with the Delta wave the PR is shorter than the the
ones with out the obvious delta wave. That is why it is important
to look at the entire EKG when reading the P-R interval. As mentioned
already there is an obvious Delta wave in I and AvL. Due to the
presents of WPW, the activation of the ventricle is different and
hence can lead to false positives or false negatives for LVH or
Left Bundle Branch Block. In this case the voltages are pretty high
in I and AVL but with a normal blood pressure, it is likely a false
positive due to the different activation of the ventricle by the
accessory pathway.
There
is also one Premature atrial contraction at beat #3.
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