Cardiovascular testing (except exercise testing, see 4.2.2)

Abstract

Late in the 18th Century an Italian, Galvani, used the frog hind limb to demonstrate that living tissues generate electrical activity. Just 80 years ago, Einthoven pioneered studies that showed that the electrical potentials of the heart can be recorded from the body surface. Now, such a recording, the electrocardiogram (Fig. 11), is the most frequently used Standard cardiovascular diagnostic test. The recorded changes in field potentials from the body surface are about 100-fold smaller than the potentials recorded in the heart muscle itself, because of conduction disturbance by the air-filled lungs.