Abstract
The chapter deals with interesting ECGs coming from other than cardiologic patients.
Cardiologists face several clinical situations that cause ECG abnormalities, involving either conduction or repolarization intervals and rhythm.
Pregnancy is a paraphysiological condition that leads to haemodynamic changes and heart remodelling, thus predisposing to supraventricular arrhythmias whose drug response is not predictable.
Acute abdomen showing atypical chest pain often mimics cardiac ischaemia due to elevated cardiac enzymes matched with changes in the repolarization phase. In these cases, abdominal ultrasound could be useful to rule out the diagnosis.
Neurological disorders’ acute onset in older patients should raise the suspicion of pulmonary embolism in case of loss of consciousness, confusion and dyspnoea.
Also a stressful acute event such as intracranial bleeding could trigger stress cardiomyopathy known as Takotsubo syndrome.
These are just some settings where cardiologists have to manage between differential diagnoses and only deep pathophysiological knowledge will lead them to the right ECG interpretation.
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Giannini, I., Pierandrei, C., Quaranta, A. (2019). Critical ECGs from Non-cardiologic Patients. In: Capucci, A. (eds) New Concepts in ECG Interpretation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91677-4_15
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