6 ECG, Arrhythmia, ST and QT Monitoring
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Line isolation monitor transients:
When electrodes or lead wires are loose or detached, the monitor becomes susceptible to switching
transients from some types of line isolation monitors. Line isolation monitor transients may resemble
actual cardiac waveforms and thus inhibit heart rate alarms. To minimize the chance of this occurring,
always adhere to the instructions for skin preparation and electrode placement given in this chapter.
About Arrhythmia Monitoring
Arrhythmia analysis provides information on your patient's condition, including heart rate, PVC rate,
rhythm, and ectopics. The monitor uses the user-selected primary and secondary ECG leads for single-
lead or multi-lead arrhythmia analysis. During arrhythmia analysis, the monitor continuously
• optimizes ECG signal quality. This is important for arrhythmia analysis. The monitor continuously
filters the ECG signal to remove baseline wander, muscle artifact, and signal irregularities. Also, if
the Patient Paced status is set to
Yes, pace pulses are filtered out to avoid processing them as QRS
beats.
• detects beats, for example, QRS complexes, identifying them for further analysis.
• measures signal features such as R-wave height, width, and timing.
• creates beat templates, and classifies and labels beats to aid in rhythm analysis and alarm detection.
• examines the ECG signal for ventricular fibrillation, asystole, and noise.
Arrhythmia Options
Your monitor has either the basic or the enhanced arrhythmia option. Both options provide rhythm
and ectopic status messages and beat labeling. The number of rhythms being classified, events being
detected, and alarms generated differs according to the option. The alarms available with the different
options are listed in the section “ECG and Arrhythmia Alarm Overview” on page 149, the rhythm and
ectopic messages detected are listed in “Arrhythmia Status Messages” on page 157.
Where Can I Find More Information?
See the Application Notes on ST and Arrhythmia supplied on your documentation DVD for detailed
information on the arrhythmia algorithm and its clinical application.
Switching Arrhythmia Analysis On and Off
1 In the Setup Arrhy menu, select Arrhythmia to toggle between On and Off.
2 Select the Confirm pop-up key which appears at the bottom of the screen.
Be aware that when arrhythmia analysis is switched off,
– the message
Arrhythmia Off appears beside the ECG wave, if configured to do so
– only the HR-related alarms are detected (the asystole alarm, the ventricular fibrillation/
tachycardia alarm, the extreme tachycardia and extreme bradycardia alarms, the high heart rate
and low heart rate alarms)
– HR High and HR Low alarms behave like normal yellow alarms, no timeout periods are active.
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