Unlike many other diagnostic tests, like those for blood samples or urine for example, ECG reports do not contain numerical values that can be compared to standard healthy values. Different people produce very different ECG outputs. As such, doctors resort to a lot of correlational analysis with the patient’s personal and medical history to understand the ECG reports. Maintaining that a mere visual examination of the ECG reports does not reveal complete information on the complicated dynamics underlying the heart system, these scientists looked at data from hundreds of ECG reports, from healthy as well as diseased hearts. For that, they need to look at data from many more ECG reports for each specific disease.

Source: Indian Express January 14, 2018 23:16 UTC