A Final Thought Before We Move On

It’s funny how little things that happen to you alter the way you approach an issue for the rest of your life. I always hated books that presented a long, complicated problem and then gave a simple answer. I recall useless, frustrating high school math books that provided answers without an explanation of how to get there! (As a future textbook crusader, my super-villain was clearly identified in those dreadful hours of study.) I found those books to be more confusing than anything. When I originally began to think about writing a book on arrhythmias, I made it a point that I would never just give a simple answer to a complicated problem. An example of this would be giving you a difficult VTach to interpret that has a ton of complicating issues present. In such a case, you could spend an hour evaluating the strip, and think you’ve come up with a great explanation, then you turn to the back of the book and see the three words that make your blood pressure shoot through the roof—Answer: Ventricular tachycardia.

It is our humble opinion that receiving a simple answer or diagnosis when you are asked to interpret a strip is not a great way to learn. You need to formulate your own opinions and share your thoughts and rationale with others in order to understand the art of arrhythmia interpretation. We are proud to say that, to our knowledge, this is the only book with a detailed answer and thought process provided for every rhythm strip presented for interpretation or for testing. We hope you find this system useful and informative.

Now that we have completed the 10 questions, apply that information to every strip you see. We will be using this format to analyze all the strips. To organize our thoughts, we have created an “answer box” that covers the major questions directly under each strip. Try to fill it out on your own, then spend some time trying to formulate your individual approach to interpreting the strips and arriving at a list of possible diagnoses.