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By-the-by, the classic medical drama scene where they shock a patient in asystole (a flat-line EKG) is incorrect; if there's no pulse at all, you keep doing compressions. Shocking won't fix asystole. Shocking is defibrillation--that is, it corrects for fibrillation, specifically ventricular fibrillation. V-fib looks like somebody's toddler tried to draw the waveform; it's just flailing erratically up and down with no fixed amplitude. The ventricles (lower chambers of the heart) are contracting in a completely uncoordinated way, so you give them a shock to hopefully get them to fall in line. There's also atrial fibrillation, affecting the upper chambers, but the atria are far less important and I've seen patients who are just permanently in afib. It just means they aren't getting that bit of extra help so their hearts pump less efficiently.
Other heart rate anomalies can be corrected with synchronized cardioversion--a shock applied at a precise time. But I don't remember much about those because it's not really my job and doesn't seem to come up much. At a code, I bag until it's time to stick the tube down.
Yay this thread is less inane now
Other heart rate anomalies can be corrected with synchronized cardioversion--a shock applied at a precise time. But I don't remember much about those because it's not really my job and doesn't seem to come up much. At a code, I bag until it's time to stick the tube down.
Yay this thread is less inane now
Point.
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