A 40 yo is brought to the emergency department with the following vitals:
- GCS 4
- SBP 70mmHg
- HR 140
- RR 50
- T 39C
There are no signs of injury. Heart sounds are dual and no extra sounds. Â There are reduced breath sounds and crepitations in the left base. The abdomen is soft and the patient appears to have peripheral cyanosis. The patient has a known history of IVDU and has been found in a chair, not rousable.
An  ECG is done.
- What does the ECG show?
- What are your differential diagnoses for this patient?
- What is the most likely diagnosis?Â
- The computer says acute AMI. Is it?​​
If we use the ‘ECG in 20 Seconds Approach’ to describe the ECG, we get the following:
Rate/RhythmÂ
106
- Is it sinus?– P waves are upright in II and inverted in aVR; Yes
- Is there a P for every QRS? Yes
QRS:
- Is it tall/small?: It’s about right, there is no hypertrophy.
- Is it wide/narrow? It’s narrow
- Is it of abnormal morphology ie., delta wave? No
- Is it clumped?(just incase we miss a Mobitz- but it’s not slow enough) No
ST-T
- Remember the baseline is the T-P line
- If we look we see that there is some ST elevation in some areas of the ECG of about 1mm, although this is difficult to gauge as the T wave goes straight into the p wave.
- The most visible abnormality is the inverted T waves.
What causes inverted T waves?
Normal variant in Children
Acute Myocardial ischaemia
Pulmonary embolism
Wellens angina
Raised intracranial pressure
Positive stress test .
infero-lateraal MI