Conduction of electrical activity through a healthy heart is highly organised and predictable. Heart muscle is conductive, unlike other muscles it can carry and transmit it's own action potential (electrical signal). There are tracts of nerves in the heart which act to regulate how the heart depolarises (makes an electric signal). The Sinoatrial (SA) node is the primary intrinsic pacemaker of the heart. This node is where all...

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Willem Einthoven (In • doe • ven) was born in the golden era of electricity and science. He designed a non-invasive way to measure the electrical activity of the heart using buckets of saline, huge electromagnets, a tiny conductive wire and photosensitive paper. Modern ECGs have replaced the buckets with electrodes and the rest with electrical amplifiers and a CPU, but the design remains practically the same. Limb...

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The following story was told to me by one of our backup crew-members on after a big case, some of the details may not be accurate. We were coming to the close of a long shift, no breaks, only two coffees and 11 hours of rubbish cases. We were called out to back-up the firies at a hotel. Apparently a male in his 30s had fallen 4 stories...

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