Özge TURGAY YILDIRIM, Mustafa Emin ÇANAKÇI

Is computer interpretation of “Normal ECG” reliable?

BackgroundElectrocardiographs (ECG) taken on an emergency clinic should be evaluated by emergency physician within 10 minutes. However, since the number of emergency physicians is not sufficient, physicians have to look at these ECGs during other patient examinations, which causes interruptions. Today, most ECG devices have computer-based analysis systems. Our aim is to determine how reliable the computer interpretations are to determine if patients with “Normal ECG” also need immediate attention.MethodsAll triage ECGs from patients applied to Emergency Clinic between 01.03.2018 and 31.03.2018 were evaluated. Patients under age of 18 were excluded. The ECGs computer interpreted as normal were evaluated by a cardiologist and if the ECGs found to be abnormal, these ECGs were than analyzed by an emergency specialist. Then these patients’ diagnosis, follow up and treatment were obtained from the hospital records. ResultsA total of 1225 ECGs were evaluated. 27.8% (n=341) were interpreted as “normal ECG” by the computer. From the ECGs which the computer interpreted as normal, 18 (5.3%) of them were assessed by cardiologist as “not normal”. These 18 ECGs were also assessed by emergency resident as abnormal. According to these results negative predictive value of the computer is 94.7% and sensitivity of the test was 98.0%. Conclusions We investigated the reliability of "normal ECG" evaluation of ECG devices in this study. Our study suggests that the devices’ “normal ECG” assessment was reliable. This study should be repeated with a larger study group on a longer period of time.

Keywords:

Electrocardiography, Computer interpretation,

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