Читать книгу Predicting Heart Failure - Группа авторов - Страница 73

The electrical activity of skeletal muscles was first noticed by Dr. Luigi Galvan, a physician in Italy, who pointed out that this activity could be recorded using electrical currents. In 1842, another physicist, Dr. Carlo Matteucci, found the electrical activity or responses for heartbeats in a frog. Several years later, a physiologist from London, Augustus Desiré Waller, showed the first human electrocardiogram, which used a capillary electrometer and electrodes placed on the chest and back. From this experiment, many demonstrations grew, including triphasic electric cardiac activity using improved capillary electrometers, followed by an improvement in refining electrometers by using five measured deflections in the electrocardiograph [18].

The electrocardiogram machine initially had three electrodes forming a triangle. Two were later removed due to the poor yielding. The machine contained cylinders of an electrolyte solution and patients placed their arms and one leg inside these cylinders [18]. Examiners continued to use this machine until a new design was introduced in 1928 which was much lighter than the previous design and had five electrodes. Further improvements consisting of 12 electrodes were then made, giving more accurate measurements.

Today, ECG systems are available in much smaller and portable forms, such as smartwatches, ECG patches, etc., which allow users to place their fingers on them to generate the ECG results within seconds.