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The electrocardiogram (EKG) is the noninvasive record of the electrical activity of the heart muscle, as reflected in tiny electrical changes on the skin, during the heart’s active (systole) and passive (diastole) phases (Hampton 2008). The EKG can be recorded easily from two electrodes placed on either side of the heart, for example, on the chest or on the left and right arms. For clinical and diagnostic purposes, however, it is usual to attach an array of 12 electrodes at various bodily sites so that the EKG can be recorded from different orientations. The characteristic wave form (see Fig. 1) that identifies the heart’s active phase, i.e., when it beats and pumps blood into the systemic circulation, was first described in 1903 by Willem Einthoven, in Leiden in the Netherlands, although electrical records of heart beats had been made as early as 1872. In 1924, Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his research in EKG. The first wave in the...
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References and Further Reading
Hampton, J. R. (2008). The ECG made easy (7th ed.). London: Churchill Livingstone.
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Carroll, D. (2019). Electrocardiogram (EKG). In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_452-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_452-2
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