A simple device to illustrate the Einthoven triangle

The Einthoven triangle is central to the field of electrocardiography, but the concept of cardiac vectors is often a difficult notion for students to grasp. To illustrate this principle, we constructed a device that recreates the conditions of an ECG reading using a battery to simulate the electrica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in physiology education 2012-12, Vol.36 (4), p.319-324
Main Authors: Jin, Benjamin E, Wulff, Heike, Widdicombe, Jonathan H, Zheng, Jie, Bers, Donald M, Puglisi, Jose L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Curriculum
Electrocardiography
Electrocardiography - instrumentation
Electrocardiography - methods
Heart - physiology
Humans
Pedagogy
Physiology
Physiology - education
Physiology - instrumentation
Physiology - methods
Science education
Students, Medical
Teaching in the Laboratory
Teaching methods
Vectorcardiography - instrumentation
Vectorcardiography - methods
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Summary:The Einthoven triangle is central to the field of electrocardiography, but the concept of cardiac vectors is often a difficult notion for students to grasp. To illustrate this principle, we constructed a device that recreates the conditions of an ECG reading using a battery to simulate the electrical vector of the heart and three voltmeters for the main electrocardiographic leads. Requiring minimal construction with low cost, this device provides hands-on practice that enables students to rediscover the principles of the Einthoven triangle, namely, that the direction of the cardiac dipole can be predicted from the deflections in any two leads and that lead I + lead III = lead II independent of the position of heart's electrical vector. We built a total of 6 devices for classes of 30 students and tested them in the first-year Human Physiology course at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine. Combined with traditional demonstrations with ECG machines, this equipment demonstrated its ability to help medical students obtain a solid foundation of the basic principles of electrocardiography.
ISSN:1043-4046
1522-1229
DOI:10.1152/advan.00029.2012