Why an Electrocardiogram is Necessary

Doctors use electrocardiogram (EKG) testing to evaluate the symptoms of heart disease and rule out other serious illnesses.

As EKG testing has grown, so has its uses in medicine. Patients are usually tested with an electrocardiogram when they exhibit the following symptoms:

* Fatigue or weakness
* Shortness of breath
* Chest pain
* Racing or fluttering heart
* Unusual sounds coming from the heart

Also, with people over 40, EKG testing is often used as a part of a routine medical exam, to screen patients for heart disease before symptoms begin. Doctors are more likely to look for early signs of heart disease when a person has had a family history of the disease, especially if that history has occurred in their immediate family. In addition to preventive testing, doctors will also use an EKG machine at routine doctors’ visits to find out how well a heart treatment or medication is working.

Using an EKG machine, doctors record a few minutes’ worth of heart signals at a time, and base their recordings on a 12-lead ECG. The downside to this type of testing is that it only records a few minutes of time. Since so many heart conditions are not occurring all of the time, this type of test is insufficient in detecting these problems. In cases like these, different types of EKG machine testing is done, including stress tests, Holter monitors and event monitors. These tests are able to analyze heart rhythms over longer periods of time, or while the heart is under stress.