Reading ECGs is a bread and butter emergency medicine skill. At busy centres a triage nurse may hand you tens of them to glance at per shift. It can be a mindless, monotonous task, but your brain needs to know where to look.
So, when you identify legitimate ST elevation and you are concerned about a STEMI, where are those reciprocal changes found again?
Think of PAILS!
This mnemonic identifies that ST segment elevation in a group of leads most commonly creates reciprocal changes in the leads that are represented by the next letter of the mnemonic. For example, Posterior STEMI often causes ST depression in Anterior leads, and so forth.
What is the double arrow under the L for? Although the PAILS mnemonic is floating around the FOAMed world, it doesn’t make perfect sense as Lateral ST elevation more commonly causes inferior rather than septal reciprocal changes.1 The double arrow is something novel that I have added to remind you that L is the exception to the rule, hence the following:
Posterior – anterior reciprocal changes
Anterior – inferior reciprocal changes
Inferior – lateral reciprocal changes
Lateral <-> inferior or septal reciprocal changes
Septal – posterior reciprocal changes
This post was reviewed by Brent Thoma and copyedited by Pouria Rezapour.
References
- 1.Burns E. Lateral STEMI. Life in the Fast Lane. https://litfl.com/lateral-stemi-ecg-library/. Published 2019.
Reviewing with the Staff
Over a few years of practice, ECG patterns like the ones described in STEMI\'s above become quite recognizable. However, they are not necessarily intuitive which is why I think this mnemonic is quite useful for junior learners as a way to easily remember where to look for those reciprocal changes! I recommend that enterprising medical students take this concept a step further by answering the questions: 1) Why do reciprocal changes occur where they do? Which coronary artery is likely to be involved with each of the patterns?
Thomas Winter
Latest posts by Thomas Winter (see all)
- Tiny Tips: STEMI? Don’t forget your PAILS! - June 11, 2019