Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Ectopic beat is a disturbance of the cardiac rhythm frequently related to the electrical conduction system of the heart, in which beats arise from fibers or group of fibers outside the region in the heart muscle ordinarily responsible for impulse formation (i.e., the sinoatrial node).
A slow heart rate of 60 or less beats per minute is defined as bradycardia. A fast heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute is defined as tachycardia. An arrhythmia is defined as one that is not physiological such as the lowered heart rate that a trained athlete may naturally have developed; the resting heart rates may be less than 60 bpm.
In a healthy heart all activities and rests during each individual cardiac cycle, or heartbeat, are initiated and orchestrated by signals of the heart's electrical conduction system, which is the "wiring" of the heart that carries electrical impulses throughout the body of cardiomyocytes, the specialized muscle cells of the heart.
As the heart beats, these pulses are transmitted smoothly via laminar (non-turbulent) blood flow throughout the arteries, and no sound is produced. Similarly, if the cuff of a sphygmomanometer is placed around a patient's upper arm and inflated to a pressure above the patient's systolic blood pressure , there will be no sound audible.
These are the first heart sound (S 1) and second heart sound (S 2), produced by the closing of the atrioventricular valves and semilunar valves, respectively. In addition to these normal sounds, a variety of other sounds may be present including heart murmurs , adventitious sounds , and gallop rhythms S 3 and S 4 .
Diagram showing how the polarity of the QRS complex in leads I, II, and III can be used to estimate the heart's electrical axis in the frontal plane. The QRS complex is the combination of three of the graphical deflections seen on a typical electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG). It is usually the central and most visually obvious part of the tracing.
A Wiggers diagram modified from [1]. A Wiggers diagram, named after its developer, Carl Wiggers, is a unique diagram that has been used in teaching cardiac physiology for more than a century.
The first finding is that junctional rhythms are regular rhythms. This means that the time interval between beats stays constant. The next normal finding is a normal QRS. Since the impulse still travels down the bundle of His, the QRS will not be wide. Junctional rhythms can present with either bradycardia, a normal heart rate, or tachycardia. [9]