An ECG paper showed a slight movement?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

With asystole (the rhythm where the heart has ceased beating and there is no electrical activity present at all) there can be a slight weave or curve. It's almost impossible to see asystole without some movement. Contrary to TV programmes you never get a true 'flat line'. I've been to people dead for days and you don't get a 'flat line'.

This half centimetre doesn't mean your grandads heart had any activity, it was completely still with no activity. He was peaceful at this point.

Somebody else has said it could have been where your grandads heart had gone from VF (Ventricular Fibrillation - A fatal chaotic state where the heart is quivering rather than pumping blood) to asystole. However this is unlikely as the ambulance crew wouldn't have left this behind, they would have left the 'best' asystole tracing behind to show without question your grandad had past away.

I'm very sorry to hear about your grandad. Hope your holding up ok.

NHS Paramedic

Para To explained it very well. it could have also been left over from when the did their daily checks, often times when your checking your monitor off at the beginning of the shift it'll have a slight "bump" and then flatten out completely while it's printing (flat because the leads are not attached to a patient) that's about the only time you will ever see a true flat line as Para To explained. sometimes we'll rip it off on scene and forget about it when we start monitoring a patient.

Sorry for your loss

18 years as a paramedic

There are 2 types of ECG papers, and they show the same data but on different size so "half a centimeter" is not enough to tell you anything what so ever, one needs to see the ECG paper and measures it with a measuring device. Often today its done automatically by a machine but its easy to read it without the machines.

Many physiology books explain how to read ECGs although just knowing to read will not help you much since you need to connect this data to conditions, which is what you study in med school.

That sounds like a calibration mark - well a test to see the machine is properly calibrated - does it go straight up for 0.5 cm then drift down to where it started? If so then it is the test that the machine is working

That half a centimeter of movement you noticed was not enough to sustain life. He was probably unconscious for some time before he died. Which means he did not have a painful death.

That movement probably was Ventricular Fibrillation moving to asystole.