The Only EKG Book You’ll Ever Need 9th Edition + (Bonus)

Preface to The Only EKG Book You’ll Ever Need – Malcolm S. Thaler

The torrid pace of technologic and scientific evolution shows no signs of letting up, and clinical medicine is both its beneficiary and, conspicuously, its victim, too, as we seem to have less and less time to actually spend with our patients. It is therefore comforting to know that at least one old friend still stands tall—the EKG. Almost 30 years have passed since the first edition of this little book, and nothing has yet supplanted the EKG as the essential tool for diagnosing many cardiac disorders (and many noncardiac ones as well).

Does your patient have chest pain?—get an EKG! Does your patient have palpitations?—get an EKG! Syncope or dizziness?—you get the point. These three decades have not dimmed the principles outlined in the preface to the first edition:

The Only EKG Book You’ll Ever Need book is about learning. It’s about keeping simple things simple, and complicated things clear, concise and, yes, simple, too. It’s about getting from here to there without scaring you to death, boring you to tears, or intimidating your socks off.

It’s about turning ignorance into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom, and all with a bit of fun. If I were writing this today, I would probably reword that business about the socks, but the sentiments remain and are, I hope, ones you share. New material has been added as new developments—and there have been many—have called for it, and everything is always discussed within its proper clinical context by putting you, the reader, right in the middle of real life situations. EKG’s are not used in isolation; they are just one piece—albeit an important piece—of the puzzle that every patient presents and that you and I have to figure out over and over again.

I want to offer a very special thanks to Dr. Adam Skolnick, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, Leon H. Charney Division of Cardiology, NYU Langone Medical Center, whose keen editorial eye, incisive analysis, and unsurpassed expertise are the best guarantee that you will be reading the most current, clear, and accurate text that anyone could hope for. And allow me to add a shout out to Dr. Jeffrey Lorin, Assistant Professor of Medicine at NYU Medical Center, who graciously opened up his world-class collection of EKG’s so that we all could benefit.