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(Cardiology/Heart Disease)

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    answered May 02, 2011 at 10:46AM
    If you are asking about ECG, a wandering baseline is an issue with the actual process of obtaining the tracing. It does not have implications in heart disease, it is a technological issue with spurious electrical activity. Anything that causes the leads to read spurious activity may give artifacts or a wandering baseline.

    Here is a great explanation I found:
    ****

    The word artifact is similar to artificial in the sense that it is often used to indicate something that is not natural (i.e. man-made). In electrocardiography, an ECG artifact is used to indicate something that is not "heart-made." These include (but are not limited to) electrical interference by outside sources, electrical noise from elsewhere in the body, poor contact, and machine malfunction. Artifacts are extremely common, and knowledge of them is necessary to prevent misinterpretation of a heart's rhythm.

    Wandering baseline

    In wandering baseline, the isoelectric line changes position. One possible cause is the cables moving during the reading. Patient movement, dirty lead wires/electrodes, loose electrodes, and a variety of other things can cause this as well.
    ****

    As you can see, this is an artifact and has nothing to do with heart disease or the lack thereof.
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