# Spelling of a medical term, re EKG **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2017, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737 "2017-12-06T19:47:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/1 "2017-12-06T19:47:25Z")
When I watched \* Emergency!,\* occasionally the screen on an EKG device, used by the paramedics, the nurses, or the doctors, would show a straight horizontal line instead of indicating the beating of the heart. The straight line would indicate the heart was not beating at all. Someone would see this and use a word which I am not sure how to spell… I think it is “asystillate.” Am I correct? ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/2 "2017-12-06T19:49:23Z")
[Asystole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asystole) ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/3 "2017-12-06T19:49:50Z")
[Asystole](https://www.practicalclinicalskills.com/asystole) > [@](#): > > Asystole Definition > > Asystole is a cardiac arrest rhythm with no discernible electrical activity on the EKG monitor. It is a flatline EKG, P Waves and QRS complexes are not present The heart is not functioning. It is a life-threatening condition that requires immediate action. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/4 "2017-12-06T19:53:10Z")
…therefore, “asystolate.” ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/5 "2017-12-06T19:54:16Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > …therefore, “asystolate.” Thanx 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/6 "2017-12-06T20:24:07Z")
They might have been saying “asystolic” instead of “asystolate”, but yeah, some variation on that word. One of the things that TV shows often get wrong is that they show someone flatlined, like the OP describes, and then they shock the patient and they recover. That very rarely works, and it’s my understanding that the usual treatment for an asystolic EKG is not to shock the heart, but to treat it with something like adrenaline (keep in mind I’m an engineer, not a medical professional). Those shocking paddles are called a “defibrillator” for a reason. They are most effective against fibrillation. When a heart is in fibrillation, it’s not pumping blood, and our hearts have a funny design in that the fibrillation state is a stable state, meaning that if you can get the heart into fibrillation, it will naturally stay in fibrillation until you do something to get it out of fibrillation. But fibrillation is nowhere near a flatline on an EKG. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Instead of a nice normal rhythm, you have a very chaotic rhythm, and what is happening inside your chest is that instead of pumping, the heart muscles are all contracting chaotically and working against each other so that they effectively no longer pump blood. If you look at the heart in fibrillation, it looks like it’s just shaking instead of pumping. The way the paddles work is that they jolt the heart with a large electrical pulse, causing all of the heart muscles to contract simultaneously. When the electricity is released, the heart will often go back into a normal rhythm. For TV shows though, a normal heartbeat is something moving on the screen, and fibrillation is also something moving on the screen. A flatline, even though it is medically inaccurate, is much easier for the viewer to understand that the heart isn’t working right. Again, I’m an engineer not a medical professional, but it’s my understanding that if the heart is asystolic, the chances of anything they do getting it out of that state is pretty small. Sometimes a big does of adrenaline will get it going again, but more often than not, the patient is toast. That also doesn’t usually make for good TV. For TV shows, you need the rescuers to do something heroic, and then the victim miraculously survives as a result of those heroic efforts. On TV shows, patients who get shocked almost always survive. In real life, the success rate isn’t anywhere near that high. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/7 "2017-12-06T21:11:22Z")
Well, I have seen that sometimes the patient recovers, sometimes not. I think that in the very last episode one patient, played by Carmen Zapata, flatlined, and she did not recover. ☹ I don’t assume that the TV patients always survive or that the episodes always have happy endings–especially these days. ---
**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/8 "2017-12-07T13:43:15Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > …therefore, “asystolate.” There’s no such word as “asystolate.” I think they were saying “asystole” and your ear was sticking a T in there. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/9 "2017-12-07T16:05:36Z")
No, I distinctly heard “asystolate.” I have it on a recording I made of the episode, and I eventually got all of the episodes on DVDs. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/10 "2017-12-07T16:10:42Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > No, I distinctly heard “asystolate.” I have it on a recording I made of the episode, and I eventually got all of the episodes on DVDs. Perhaps the cause of death was too _late to asyst_. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/11 "2017-12-07T16:16:28Z")
> [@Arcite](#): > > There’s no such word as “asystolate.” I think they were saying “asystole” and your ear was sticking a T in there. Or the actor mispronounced the word. I’ve seen that with medical terms I’ve known. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/12 "2017-12-07T16:33:13Z")
> [@](#): > > One of the things that TV shows often get wrong is that they show someone flatlined, like the OP describes, and then they shock the patient and they recover. One interesting thing I learned recently is that the purpose of a defibrillator is to STOP from beating, when it is in an abnormal rhythm, to allow it to restart with a normal rhythm. I also learned that no one really knows why a defibrillator works. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/13 "2017-12-07T16:48:49Z")
Since the title of this thread is " Spelling of a medical term, re EKG", it won’t be too far off-topic to ask also: Why is electrocardiogram abbreviated to EKG? ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/14 "2017-12-07T17:47:14Z")
It comes from the German spelling, electokardiogram ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/15 "2017-12-07T18:27:52Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Since the title of this thread is " Spelling of a medical term, re EKG", it won’t be too far off-topic to ask also: Why is electrocardiogram abbreviated to EKG? So it isn’t confused with EEG, or Electroencephalogram. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/16 "2017-12-07T18:58:30Z")
I’ve often seen it abbreviated to “ECG”. No relation to **engineer\_comp\_geek** , of course. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/17 "2017-12-07T21:17:29Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > So it isn’t confused with EEG, or Electroencephalogram. > [@cochrane](#): > > I’ve often seen it abbreviated to “ECG”. No relation to **engineer\_comp\_geek** , of course. 🙂 Which ties back to **Derleth** ’s observation: “EE SEE GEE” and “EE EE GEE” are too easy to confuse when heard over background noise or a poor-quality voice communications link. “EE KAY GEE” is much more distinct. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/18 "2017-12-07T21:26:23Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Which ties back to **Derleth** ’s observation: “EE SEE GEE” and “EE EE GEE” are too easy to confuse when heard over background noise or a poor-quality voice communications link. “EE KAY GEE” is much more distinct. It could go either way in print. I’ve seen it as “ECG” in print, so there’s little chance for confusion there. But I more often see “EKG”. Of course in spoken conversation, it’s better to say “EKG” as the hard consonant sound is more easily heard. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2017, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/19 "2017-12-08T00:04:58Z")
Over here it is always ECG. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2017, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737/20 "2017-12-08T00:50:27Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Over here it is always ECG. Over there, Over there, Where the Hell, where the Hell’s “over there”? Or… **bob++** , where are you? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-of-a-medical-term-re-ekg/803737.md?page=2)