Wide-Complex Tachycardia: The Approach
Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the student should be able to:
- Identify the most common lethal arrhythmia, and understand that diagnosing it should be the primary focus on the evaluation of any wide-complex tachycardia (WCT). (p 556)
- State the rhythm that is found to be the culprit arrhythmia in 80% of the WCTs. (pp 556, 557)
- Discuss the meaning of a distraction injury as it pertains to the WCTs and why it is clinically relevant. (p 556)
- Discuss the statement, “The severity of any WCT should be based solely on the overall end-organ perfusion.” (p 556)
- Discuss the connection between the presence of an old or evolving myocardial infarction and the formation of a reentry loop leading to a ventricular tachycardia. (p 557)
- Predict the probability that a WCT in a patient with a history of an old or new myocardial infarction is ventricular tachycardia. (p 557)
- List and discuss the three clinical stages in the evaluation of any patient. Then, identify the most important aspect of the clinical evaluation in each stage. (pp 557–558)
- Analyze the results of interrater reliability in the interpretation of ECGs, and discuss why the results are so low. (p 559)
- Discuss a possible clinical management scenario of a patient working through the emergent, urgent, and the nonurgent phases. (pp 559–560)
