Physician and cardiovascular fellow Dr. Musa A. Sharkawi shared this ECG on Twitter (@MusaSharkawi) and has graciously allowed us to reproduce it here. A 50-year-old male presents with a chief complaint of abrupt-onset severe chest pain. He is pale, diaphoretic, and ill-appearing—in moderate respiratory distress with extensive biateral crackles and a low blood pressure. Further […]

Adult High Performance CPR (HP-CPR) Demo at the South Carolina Resuscitation Academy! Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue: Tim Santini, Jon Ceiply, Shane Marstiller, Sean Kavlick What is High Performance CPR? High Performance CPR typically consists of expertly performed BLS with strict attention to: Minimally interrupted chest compressions Ensuring optimal rate (100-120) Ensuring adequate depth (2 […]

82 year old male, in good physical shape, stops at a cafe for lunch after cycling for an hour. Witnesses report a syncopal episode lasting approximately 30 seconds. Patient history significant for prior MI requiring 3 stents. No other significant history. Patient denies any CP, SOB, N/V, lightheadedness. In fact, he denies any complaints at […]

I’ve spent nine years working in an emergency department, which means I’ve also spent nine years performing electrocardiograms at triage. With a couple thousand waiting-room ECGs under my belt, I’ve noticed a few things: A lot of ECGs are ordered at triage. Many of them are performed on low-risk patients. Very few of those ECGs […]

Welcome to the second installment in our ECG Mixtape series! It looks like this will be an irregular publication while we streamline our process of picking cases and getting permission to reproduce them. Enjoy! Pick of the Week This weeks top pick comes from cardiologist Dr. Gianni Manzo in São Paulo, Brazil, who shared this […]

Welcome to the start of a new series here at EMS 12-Lead. With the ECG Mixtapes we’ll compile some of the week’s best ECG’s from around the world of social media and #FOAMed. As High Fidelity taught us, “The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages […]

It is a beautiful summer afternoon when you and your partner are called to the beach for a “swimmer in distress”. Upon your arrival, you find a 48 year old male sitting on a beach towel, appearing to be in some distress. You are told that he was swimming in the ocean when he began […]

This is the conclusion to Wednesday’s post; if you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest checking out the original case description and initial ECG. Wednesday’s case introduced a 59 year old woman with a chief complaint of intermittent occipital head pain for about 10 days. Recently, it had started radiating into her neck and upper […]

One of my co-workers told me that she wants to see more case studies. A 59-year-old female presents to the emergency department with a chief complaint of “head pain that comes and goes.” She describes the pain as a dull ache in her occiput that’s been striking without warning a couple of times per day […]

Apparently I went to the Rick Bukata School of Titling Articles. A 22-year-old male presents with agitation and delirium after smoking an unknown substance that an equally unknown person on the street offered him. You note a rapid radial pulse at around 150 bpm and attach him to the cardiac monitor: Well now we’re in […]