DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW APPROACH TO SERIAL ANALYSIS - THE MANUFACTURERS VIEWPOINT

The Megacare Electrocardiographic (ECG) Management System (Siemens-Ele ma, Stockholm, Sweden) incorporates methods for serial comparison of t he 12-lead ECG based on the Glasgow interpretation program. While a co mputer is obviously useful for reporting serial changes following myoc ardial infarction, it was believed helpful to produce a summary serial comparison statement that would take into account the fact that ECG a ppearances may normally fluctuate from day to day for a variety of rea sons. Thus, five additional summary statements were added to the Glasg ow program to indicate the extent of change globally compared to the p revious ECG recording. In an ECG management system, an important facil ity that can potentially cause difficulties with serial comparison is overreading. When a statement has been altered by a reviewer, the chan ges are required to be incorporated into the ECG file so that in any s ubsequent serial comparison, the modified report is available for comp arison with the next EGG. The Megacare system allows for this, and its methodology is described in this article.