Acute Medicine | Syncope or pre-syncope 07 knowledge B

ECG Interpretation in the Bradycardic Patient
Session Overview
Description
This session will recap the essentials of ECG interpretation, focusing on conduction defects and heart block.

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Systematically assess an ECG for conduction defects

Bradycardia may be caused by a conduction defect at any point along the course of depolarisation, including the sinoatrial (SA) node, the atrioventricular (AV) node, or the Bundle of His (Fig 1).

In a bradycardic patient an ECG at the time of symptoms may reveal the diagnosis, such as complete AV block or sinus arrest.

More commonly however, the patient presents after the clinical event. The ECG may still reveal conduction defects that may be intermittently progressing to symptomatic bradycardia, such as sinus node dysfunction, Mobitz type II heart block, bifascicular block, etc.