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.