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(Circulation. 1999;100:e148.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.

Circulation Electronic Pages

Naming of the Waves in the ECG With a Brief Account of Their Genesis

Preben Bjerregaard, MD, DMSc; Ihor Gussak, MD, PhD

Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, St Louis University, Health Science Center, St Louis, Mo

	Introduction

 
To the Editor:

We want to compliment Dr Hurst for his excellent article, "Naming of the Waves in the ECG With a Brief Account of Their Genesis,"¹ but we would like to make a few comments.

In "Proceedings of the Symposium on Developments in Electrocardiography, 1927 to 1977,"² G.E. Burch from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans wrote this about the history of precordial leads in electrocardiography: "The complexes or deflections in these leads were denoted by letters P, Q, R, S, and T by Einthoven. These letters were chosen since vitamins A and B had been discovered and identified by the first letters of the alphabet. Einthoven used letters from the latter part of the alphabet in order to leave enough letters in the first part for new and yet undiscovered vitamins." Dr Burch does not mention where he received this information, but because most vitamins were discovered much later than the ECG, the theory brought forward by Dr Hurst stating that Einthoven was thinking about Descartes when he used the letter P to designate a point on a curve seems much more credible.

Hurst et al¹ deserve a good bit of credit for their fine work regarding the so-called M-cells, but it is important to mention that in 1985, Watanabe et al³ noticed midmyocardial cells with a long action potential duration when they recorded action potentials from different regions of the guinea pig ventricle to characterize regional differences in wave form configuration and to acquire insight . . . [Full Text of this Article]

J. Willis Hurst, MD

Emory University School of Medicine Atlanta, Ga