Word: electrocardiogram
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...first stage at which my wife's exam would differ from mine would be at the cardiac-function lab. While she would have been given an electrocardiogram at rest, a stress test might have been ruled out. EKGs of women on the treadmill are notoriously inaccurate, frequently showing abnormalities where none exist. Instead, women are carefully questioned about family history that might reveal a disposition toward heart disease. Only if heart disease runs in the family would the clinic be tempted to run a stress test...
...HEARTBURN A new blood test--coupled with an electrocardiogram--helps doctors quickly assess whether a patient with chest pains is really having a heart attack. The test measures troponin, a protein released by damaged heart muscle...
Managed care originated in Southern California, so UCLA has been especially hard hit. Some 40% of its patients are under some kind of plan. Not long ago, UCLA cardiologists routinely charged $400 for an appointment and electrocardiogram. Now they are lucky to get $160 from managed care. In response, UCLA has been forced to cut staff from 4,200 in 1990 to 3,200 today. It has instituted productivity standards for doctors and shortened hospital stays. Unlicensed "care partners" have been hired to take over some of the more routine duties of higher-paid registered nurses. And in a kind...
Even at the bedside, there was still a chance for someone to realize that something had gone desperately wrong. Lehman's blood tests showed abnormal readings, and her electrocardiogram indicated enormous stresses on her heart. "She was vomiting sheets of tissue," her husband Robert Distel told the Globe. "[The doctors] said this was the worst they had ever seen." But they considered Lehman's violent reaction to be normal for such an aggressive treatment. All told, at least five hospital staff members failed to figure out that their therapy was killing...
...blood test can tell whether patients with chest pain but a normal electrocardiogram are in fact having a heart attack; such people usually go into intensive care as a precaution, but over 70% don't belong there...