The vectorcardiogram of cardiac infarction.

A simple method of drawing the three-plane projection of the spatial vectorcardiogram has been described (Shillingford and Brigden, 1951). A series of normal vectorcardiograms were studied and found to have certain constant characteristics that were comparable with the results obtained by electronic methods. In this paper we report the vectorcardiographic findings of extensive cardiac infarction, and the abnormal patterns obtained have been related to the QRS-T complexes recorded from the same patients in the conventional manner. Duchosal and Sulzer (1949) and Vastesaeger (1949) have studied the vectorcardiogram of cardiac infarction, using an electronic apparatus. Our findings are in substantial agreement with those recently reported by Scherlis and Grishman (1951); their three-plane vectorcardiograms were seen simultaneously on a tribeam cathode-ray tube and photographed on one film.