Fibrillation
DESCRIPTION Just a chaotic squiggle. It can be a coarse squiggle (“coarse ventricular fibrillation”) or a fine squiggle (“fine ventricular fibrillation”). There is a subtle (so subtle nobody except aging…
Idioventricular Rhythm
DESCRIPTION This is a wide complex rhythm which has no preceding P waves, originating from the ventricles, with a rate under 100 but over 60. Why isn’t it ventricular tachycardia…
Fibrillation
DESCRIPTION An irregular rhythm with no P waves preceding the QRS complexes essentially defines atrial fibrillation. If the ventricular response to the atrial fibrillation is slow enough, you can see…
Atrial Tachycardia
DESCRIPTION This is really a pumped-up version of the wandering atrial pacemaker. From a descriptive perspective, it’s as if you took the meandering professor from our last example and gave…
Bradycardia
DESCRIPTION Just like sinus rhythm, but slower; it is defined as sinus rhythm (every QRS preceded by a proper P wave) with a rate under 60. HABITAT Boring lectures, a…
Atrial Pacemaker
DESCRIPTION A sort of poetic description, suggestive of a thoughtful atrial pacemaker, pipe in hand, strolling around the campus, perhaps bumping into an occasional tree. Actually, the label suggests that…
Arrhythmia
DESCRIPTION The rhythm is fairly regular and looks like sinus rhythm, with P waves before each QRS. But if you look closely, you’ll see some irregularity, a phasic speeding up…
Preexcitation
DESCRIPTION Technically this isn’t an arrhythmia (actually, even non-technically it isn’t!) but this condition provides the substrate for some crazy arrhythmias, so I thought I’d include it. Your attendings always…
Sinus Rhythm
DESCRIPTION This, technically, isn’t an arrhythmia at all, but needs to be included simply because it’s very important to be able to call something “normal” if it really is! The…
Tachycardia
DESCRIPTION The same as sinus rhythm, only faster: by definition, sinus rhythm with a rate over 100. Each QRS is preceded by a proper P wave. If you are seeing…
