Electrocardiogram Interpretation
Glenn Wetzel, director of the pediatric interventional electrophysiology program, discusses his research on electrocardiogram interpretation, one of the most basic and ubiquitous tasks of cardiology. He also assesses the Pediatric ECG Review, a web-based platform that is used by physicians, medical professionals and various pediatric cardiology fellowship training programs. This platform also provides a database that can be used for research and may lead to insights into the most effective ways to enhance ECG interpretation skills.
Hi, I'm uh Glenn Wetzel, a pediatric electrophysiologist here at Johns Hopkins. I'd like to introduce you to our research regarding uh optimization of one of the most basic and ubiquitous tasks of cardiology. That is the interpretation of the electrocardiogram. Since Doctor Eindhoven reported the invention of the ECG in 1903 ECG machines have improved greatly. But the way we interpret those wave forms, the P QR S and T waves has not really changed. The way we have taught the clinical skill of EKG interpretation also remains largely the same several years ago. My partner, Doctor Corine Guerriere at the University of Tennessee and I began using an ECG of the week approach to teach our pediatric cardiology fellows. Some of the finer points of ECG interpretation that process has evolved into a web based platform that we call pediatric ECG review. That program is now used by more than 30 pediatric cardiology fellowship programs and some 600 physicians and other medical personnel from both the US and abroad have used it for instruction of trainees in pediatric ecg interpretation. Importantly, since this project records the ECG interpretations of the participants, it provides the first large scale database of pediatric training ecg interpretations to be available for res research. When IRB approval, we have extracted that data to a repository of deidentified ecg interpretations. So our team is in the process of assessing those um 10,000 responses from that unique resource to determine the accuracy of the interpretations. This data will provide us with the first objective assessment of ECG interpretation, skills of individual participants and should lead to insights into the most effective way of enhancing those skills. This approach has already led to the development of an entirely new focus of ecg interpretation that we call not to miss as the name implies, not all ECG interpretations have equal clinical significance. We believe that uh focusing on those critical ECG findings will become of increasing importance in ECG interpretation particularly in light of the recent advances in A I. We expect that the preliminary assessment of ECGS will soon be provided by A I. But the final interpretation of critical ECG findings will continue to require the direct participation of well-trained cardiologists and a broad range of other health care providers. So you may be hearing more about pediatric ECG review and not to miss soon. Thanks for listening.
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