High-Resolution Electrocardiography in Clinical Practice

Abstract. Introduction. Current technological progress and advances in electronics and medical equipment allow reaching unprecedented heights in the detection of various arrhythmic conditions, while such conditions can be observed directly at the time of their occurrence. Nevertheless, there is an issue related to predicting life-threatening conditions that may lead to cardiac arrest causing sudden cardiac death. We should also note some difficulties in timely predicting myocardial infarction. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new or implement the existing technologies that allow ensuring high susceptibility and specificity toward these disorders. Aim. To study the potential of high-frequency electrocardiography regarding identifying additional criteria for myocardial ischemia and informing about the possible development of cardiac arrhythmia. Materials and Methods. Methodological approaches: We searched for and analyzed sources in the NCBI and eLibrary databases and in Google Scholar using the following keywords: Advanced ECG, High Frequency ECG, and HF ECG ischaemia. The search was filtered for the years 1930-2022. Publications containing only summaries, abstracts, or duplicated information were excluded from the analysis. Thus, this present descriptive review includes generalized and systematized data from 50 sources, encompassing current clinical trials, reports, and systematic reviews. Results and Discussion. High-frequency electrocardiography is the most promising method in terms of the qualities required for a technique to register such disorders. When forming a cardiogram, the high-frequency electrocardiography method has three stages: 1) Registration of high-frequency electrical cardiac potentials; 2) signal amplification due to the computational performance to enhance the resolution; and 3) signal averaging through mathematical computations and further filtering the necessary sectors of the electrocardiogram. Combining the stages presented above allows registering low-amplitude signals, which would be impossible when using standard electrocardiography techniques. Low-amplitude signals provide important diagnostic information in risk stratification regarding life-threatening cardiovascular diseases. Detecting delayed myocardium depolarization potentials, ventricular late potentials, and atrial late potentials is an important task in identifying these pathologic conditions. Conclusions. Over thirty years, the high-frequency electrocardiography technique has been frequently studied and tested in various countries, such as the USA, Israel, Spain, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain. These studies have proven the advantage of this method over the standard method of recording the electrical potentials of heart. This paper presents information on the studies and the facts proving the efficacy of the high-resolution electrocardiography technique.