What's in the web for family physicians – interactive ECG tutorials

Alfred KY Tang 鄧權恩

ECG Teacher
www.ecgteacher.com/

ECGTeacher.com is a web resource dedicated to teaching ECG interpretation with the use of videos and interactive tools. 3D reconstructions and informative 2D animations are developed to facilitate learning and understanding. There are videos explaining how individual ECG leads analyse and record cardiac current. To ensure thorough understanding of the ECG tracing, it is good to know how depolarisation and repolarisation waves spread through the muscles walls of the heart and how the leads of the ECG machine are designed to detect and record these two waves of cardiac electrical activity. Videos are categorized into sections like Electrical Activities, ECG generation, LEAD perspectives, Time events in ECG, predicted ECG. Users may sign up to attempt the quiz at a subscription fee. Quite a few tutorial videos can be found at youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/ECGTeacher

EKG Academy
http://www.ecgacademy.com/index.html

EKG Academy is an interactive study site for electrocardiogram interpretation. Over 100 quiz questions are provided for studying and quite reference. Both EKG medical background material as well as a Name That Strip section for self assessment and practice. The author believes that it is only through frequent practice that one can maintain his ECG skills sharp. The high level courses need signing up with membership fee. However, there are quite a few useful videos from the basic course which are free of charge. Some of the useful topics includes Basic Electrical Concepts – What is electricity, Cardiac tissues and electricity, 3-D Anatomy of the heart, Electrical events of the heart, The basics of ECG LEADS, Determining heart rate and ECG Interval measurements.

ECG Learning Center - An introduction to clinical electrocardiography
http://ecg.utah.edu/

This interactive ECG tutorial website offers a good revision on basics to clinical electrocardiography. While conforming to standard terminology and criteria, the website incorporates new diagnostic concepts derived from the recent ECG literature. The author is trying to advocate that is important to realize that the mastery of ECG can only occur if one acquires considerable experience in reading ECG's and correlating the specific ECG findings with the pathophysiology and clinical status of the patient. The tutorial is organized into sections based on a recommended Method of ECG interpretation. Each section provides some didactic teaching points, often linked to illustrations, and an interactive quiz. An Outline Of Electrocardiography in pdf format (http://ecg.utah.edu/pdf/) can be downloaded and printed as a supplement to this on-line tutorial.

ECG Wave-Maven
http://ecg.bidmc.harvard.edu/maven/mavenmain.asp

This is a self-assessment program on interpretation of 12-lead diagnostic ECGs, There are over 400 case studies for practice of ECG interpretation skills, and to browse through the cases in reference mode. The author found that traditional teaching fail to help young professionals reaching a higher level of "ECG literacy", and current textbook materials do not adequately integrate ECG interpretation of waveform findings with other clinical data. They have therefore created this infrastructure for a unique web-based tutorial. The website features a quiz mode, a reference mode, random cases, most recent cases, and search cases by diagnosis. A manual on ECG interpretation is downloadable from the website at http://cardionotes.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/ecg-tutorial-by-dr-satish.pdf

LearnTheHeart.com
http://www.learntheheart.com/LearnTheHeart.com

This is a free website dedicated to the education of healthcare professionals on ECG interpretations. There is a library of tracings for ECG quiz. Features of LearnTheHeart.com include a Complete ECG review section, and a Cardiology review section. The former covers the essentials of ECG interpretation, with hundreds of ECGs for review and help users applying their ECG skills to clinical practice. The latter is a comprehensive review of many topics in cardiology, presented in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Each cardiology topic includes multiple tools to aid in learning including a quick fact sheet for brief review, case presentations and review questions. Definitions of important cardiology terms and descriptions of classic cardiology signs are included.

ECGpedia
http://en.ecgpedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

ECGpedia is a free online tutorial and textbook on ECG interpretation. Like Wikipedia encyclopedia, it allows user to improve and make contributions. This site is designed for healthcare professionals interested in brushing up their skills in ECG interpretation. Sections of the website includes the ECG Course in which basics were presented, followed by the interpretation of the normal ECG according to a 7+2 step plan. The ECG textbook is a multimedia online book with a lot of animations and illustrations on basics of ECG. There are also Practice ECGs. and a ECG reference card available for download and printing. A series of ECG videos can be found at YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/cardionetworks , maintained by Cardionetwork Foundation, founder of ECGpedia.