Review of the pocket-electrocardiograph (PECG) in a large general medical clinic.

Two hundred and twenty patients were selected for testing with the patient-activated Pocket Electrocardiography (PECG) because angina pectoris and similar diagnoses could not be excluded. They were selected during a 30-month period from the population of approximately 12,000 new patients visiting a general medical clinic at Nippon Medical School Hospital. The test confirmed the preliminary diagnosis in 79.1%; 9.6% were not confirmed and 11.3% did not have an attack during the PECG examination. The PECG examination is useful in the differential diagnosis of angina pectoris, cardiac neurosis, phantom arrhythmia, and arrhythmia when the routine ECG examinations are essentially negative.