![]() The EKG only correctly identified a previous heart attack 48.4 percent of the time when compared with an MRI. One study measured the accuracy of an EKG for diagnosing a previous heart attack compared to a cardiac MRI. It’s relatively common for EKG results to give a false positive. If you’ve had a silent heart attack, you may not know it occurred until you have an imaging test like an EKG, MRI, CT scan, or ultrasound.Īn EKG is one tool that doctors use to find evidence of previous heart attacks, but it’s best used when combined with other diagnostic techniques like blood tests and imaging. Not all heart attacks produce noticeable symptoms. Abnormal electrical patterns during the test suggest that part of your heart may have been damaged from lack of oxygen. That’s why it’s helpful to have evidence of changes from your heart’s usual electrical patterns.Ĭan an EKG detect a previous heart attack?Īn EKG can potentially detect that you had a heart attack years ago without knowing it. This is important because some changes to your heart’s electrical activity are temporary. This is done so that there’s a hard copy record of how your heart was behaving at that moment. Printouts show the electrical pattern of your heart. The electrodes are removable stickers attached by wires to the EKG machine, which records electrical signals from your heart and displays them on a monitor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |