ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN THE FIRST WEEK OF LIFE

Abstract

Cardiac surgery has advanced so rapidly in the last decade that the correction of many congenital heart defects, which was the dream of the surgeon of yesterday, has today become a reality. This vastly extended scope of operative technique, which may indeed be life-saving in infants and children, can only be possible with accurate diagnosis. Though many special techniques are available for determining the exact nature of the defect before operation, none perhaps is so simple and affords so much information as the electrocardiogram, particularly as we shall see later, when serial records are taken at intervals after birth.