The role of the 12-lead ECG as a screening test for cardiac source of embolus.

Background: Investigation for cardiac source of embolus (CSE) is one of the commonest referrals for transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) of hospital inpatients, but has a relatively low-diagnostic yield. We sort to investigate whether 12-lead ECG might be useful in screening patients to obviate the need for TTE, in a subset of patients referred for echocardiographic investigation of cardiac source of embolus.

Methods: We collected ECG and echo data for 400 consecutively referred inpatients for TTE investigation of possible cardiac source of embolus.