Anaesthesia Fundamentals | Physiology | Cardiac Electrophysiology

Cardiac Electrophysiology
Session overview
Description
The session discusses the formation of the action potential activity within the heart that can be recorded to produce an electrocardiogram (ECG).

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

• Describe the action potential of the cardiac cells and to explain how this relates to the formation of the electrocardiogram (ECG)
• Explain how the ECG is used to analyse the function of the different parts of the cardiac syncytium
• Identify the parts of the specialist cardiac conduction system
• Describe how the rate of fire of the cardiac pacemaker is controlled by the central nervous system

Cardiac electrophysiology is core to the understanding of the cardiac function and is regularly discussed in the Primary FRCA.

To fully understand an electrocardiogram (ECG) trace it is important to know how the action potentials of individual cells add up to form the cumulative action potential seen in the ECG.

This session describes the mechanism of control of the cardiac conduction by the central nervous system, and explains how the anatomy and function of the specialist cardiac conduction system affects the ECG waveform.