The heart beats with a consistent motion to pump blood through the circulatory system, only
changing in pace to accommodate blood flow needs during exercise, stress, or resting periods.
If the conduction systems of the heart are interrupted or the cardiac muscles are damaged, the
heart will beat in an irregular motion, reducing the efficiency of the heart. This can be bad…
1 – The Heart and the ECG
See slides for background of how an ECG signal works.
2 – ECG parameters for diagnoses
(These are not completely real numbers… don’t build a defibrillator based on these)
Diagnosis Pulse QRS amplitude P amplitude T amplitude
Normal 40-200 6 1 1
Ventricular fibrillation (v-fib) > 200 3 0 0
Preventricular contraction (PVC) 40-200 12 1 1
Ventricular tachycardia (v-tac) > 200 12 0 0
Crash (going south in a hurry) < 40 4 1 1
Cardiac arrest (dead) 0 0 0 0
3 - Assignment
You work for Zoll, a manufacturer of automated external defibrillators, and you are tasked with writing the algorithm for determining the rhythm of the patient’s heart and if it’s appropriate to apply a shock to the heart. However, the company wants to make this product as cheaply as possible and will rely on keyboard input to diagnose the patient instead of an automated lead
system.
Create a program in VB. Write a program to read the 4 parameters from textboxes and output an ECG rhythm diagnosis. Check the variables against the table above and output a diagnosis.
Output “unknown” if you can’t match the parameters. See UI image
