FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Florida Medical Center's Heart Institute of Florida is one of only two hospitals in the state to offer cutting-edge 80-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) technology.

The PRIME ECG® 80-lead system measures electrical impulses throughout the entire heart -- as opposed to a traditional 12-lead ECG, which only scans the frontal portion--and offers a quicker, less invasive solution for difficult-to-diagnose heart attack patients than do the echocardiogram and blood tests used by most hospitals.

"This equipment is the next step in emergency cardiac care,: says Dr. Louis Isaacson, director of emergency services at Florida Medical Center. "The standard EKG/ECG limited our ability to diagnose patients quickly who were suffering from heart attacks in portions of the heart that the 12-lead equipment didn't monitor.  Now we have options."

While it takes about the same amount of time as a traditional ECG, Florida Medical Center's 80-lead ECG system is able to monitor more areas of the heart because it has more than six times as many "leads" or recording electrodes.  The electrodes monitor the heart's electrical impulses and track the irregularities that appear when part of the heart is starved of oxygen because of a blockage. 

The leads are contained in an adhesive gel "vest" that is applied to the front and back of a patient.  A standard ECG is only applied to a patient's front, meaning it cannot monitor impulses in the back and side sections of the heart.

Another advance from the basic ECG is the 80-lead system's ability to perform Body Surface Mapping (BSM).  Whereas before physicians were limited to waves on graphing paper,

Florida Medical Center's new equipment shows 3-D colored images of a patient's torso, with potential myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) highlighted in red.The PRIME ECG equipment will be used on those patients who are clearly exhibiting symptoms of a heart attack, but whose ECGs do not show any unusual activity. 

Previously, these patients would have been given an echocardiogram, or ultrasound, of the heart to try to spot disturbances or would need to have blood drawn to test for signs of the heart tissue death that occurs during a heart attack.  Such tests, however, take time-- the blood test is not conclusive for up to six hours after the start of an attack--and in that time, more heart muscle dies.

The damage that can occur in difficult cases like these can lead to a greater risk of congestive heart failure in the patient's future. By contrast, the 80-lead ECG, which is also non-invasive and entirely painless, can make the same diagnosis in about 10 minutes.

Florida Medical Center, part of Tenet's Miami-Dade/Broward Health Network, is a 459-bed acute care hospital founded in 1973 and fully accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. 

Located at 5000 West Oakland Park Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale in western Broward County, Florida Medical Center offers a broad range of medical and surgical services.  These services include the Heart Institute of Florida, its center for cardiac services, designated a Premium Cardiac Specialty Center by UnitedHealthcare; bariatrics, for which it earned distinction as an American Society for Bariatric Surgery (ASBS) Center of Excellence; 24-hour emergency services; and cancer care. 

Additional services include orthopedics, neurology and neurosurgery, urology, psychiatry, gynecology, imaging, pain center, sleep lab and wound care