Is an 80-lead ECG worth the extra 68 leads?

Although an 80-lead ECG may show evidence of a full thickness myocardial infarction not seen on a 12-lead ECG it does not necessarily follow that treating the patient differently will lead to a better outcome.

Commenting on Jason Winter's post about 80-lead ECGs on his ECG blog which gave an overview of a recent paper (1).

1. Hoekstra JW, O'Neill BJ, Pride YB, et al. Acute detection of ST-elevation myocardial infarction missed on standard 12-Lead ECG with a novel 80-lead real-time digital body surface map: primary results from the multicenter OCCULT MI trial. Ann Emerg Med. 2009;54(6):779-788.e1. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19766352. 

Vitamin D and Health

Although heavy going at times I attended an interesting update on Vitamin D at Truro today. Basically Vitamin D seems ... well ... vital not only for bones but for soft tissues as well(1). It would be interesting to explore the relationship with diabetes, Type 1 in particular, in more detail. I had been aware of a lot of the work but haven't looked into it ... Vitamin D being a dreary subject I suppose. I wonder why that is? Is it because its been written about for such a long time. If it had a name like 'pro-hormone D123' it might not induce indifference so readily.

The conclusions seemed to be that trying to raise your Vitamin D levels to at least 75 nmol/L is another reason for cycling to work and if we go surfing to wear a shorty wetsuit. Marvellous.

1. Bouillon R, Carmeliet G, Verlinden L, et al. Vitamin D and Human Health: Lessons from Vitamin D Receptor Null Mice. Endocrine Reviews. 2008;29(6):726-776. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583388/?tool=pubmed [Accessed December 10, 2009].