This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Correction  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Richard S. Crampton, MD; Frank P. Hunter, Jr.
University of Virginia Medical Center Charlottesville

JAMA. 1973;223(10):1160.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Parkinsonian tremor and hiccups,¹ a roller pump used in hemodialysis,² myoclonic movement (211:829, 1970), and broken electrocardiographic electrode wires (220:1130, 1972) have caused false atrial arrhythmias. Recently we observed electrocardiographic artifacts that mimicked atrial flutter during nasogastric suction with a roller pump. When seen by us, a patient with intestinal obstruction had no muscle tremor or hiccups, had been given digitalis for a short term for what was thought to be atrial flutter, and was connected to an Air-Shields Drainage Pump (model DP-45-1) via nasogastric tubing. False atrial flutter occurred only during suction and completely disappeared whenever the pump was turned off or suction tubing disconnected, thus ruling out atrial dissociation (Fig). Further testing of the drainage pump, electrocardiographic recorder and electrodes, and alternating current wall receptacle showed that this artifact was not electrically induced, but rather mechanically caused by the roller pump as it regularly . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?