Get a life. If you don't like the content of the thread then just ignore it. Not everything is about being high or low yield. I was curious about something and asked someone who is skilled at explaining it.
I was curious about the content also, until I saw were it was going. Hence I commented on it. I do understand your type, so it was as much a comment as it was a warning - but oh well.
As for the usefulness of high/low yield, talk to me again after your clinic years / Step 1 or even an EKG course,
anything pertaining to this topic.
EDIT: after reading/quoting some replies below, it appears others are echoing my sentiments.
I'm just wondering why the allo forum has suddenly turned into the physio homework help forum...
+1
It's not about high or low yield but trying to understand why things are the way they are. I find that I retain concepts much better than facts and it's easier to remember things if I can reason through it. Integrating knowledge and applying it is more important than memorizing facts and regurgitating it onto a computer screen. We're studying to be doctors, not Step 1 test takers.
Haha. I wasn't advising you to focus on how to be better on tests - my personality is the opposite of that.
Instead, I was telling you to learn what's clinically applicable (i.e. be a good doctor, not a test taker/academic). I know most the physicians I've worked with outside of cardiology couldn't explain this. In this thread, a neurosurgeon + cardiologist didn't agree on the exact mechanism. I too learn best with concepts, but in this case it's not advisable.
There are so many more important concepts to learn. Take for example the best internal medicine book for medical students, Step Up to Medicine, it won't explain such a concept. Just for fun, I read the STEMI section in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, mind you this is a
4,100 page tome on internal medicine written by the best physicians in the world. Guess what, their explanation of a STEMI is essentially what I said, it's a pattern from the direction the tissue is depolarizing.
To your statement, "We're studying to be doctors, not Step 1 test takers." Oh, how misinformed you are. This has nothing to do with being a good physician. If you can't even find it in Harrisons, then I would question how important it will be for you clinically (especially as a med student!). Most residents don't even have time to read through Harrisons.
Whatever though, I guess med students will be med students.
My cardiology teacher said the mechanism is unimportant. When I told her some proposed mechanisms I read, some of them people already mentioned here, she said that sometimes STEMI doesn't originate from that mechanism, and sometimes that mechanism doesn't cause STEMI.
Exactly. It isn't important.
I find there's not much to retain in terms of the mechanisms behind elevated and depressed ST segments on the EKG becausethe concepts are more complex than the answer. Reasoning through it can lead to wrong answers if you're not intimately familiar with it. The stuff that needs to be retained by your method is figuring out axis, figuring out which leads point to which anatomical location, etc. That's stuff where the explanations are simpler and can aid in memorizing the facts you need to know. But as far as STEMI and NSTEMI go, the explanation is more likely to get in the way of than it will aid in diagnostics. And if I want to get that STEMI to the cath lab in 90 minutes, it's much more important to get the pattern recognition down than anything else.
Now if people want to know about it, great, get a cardiologist to explain it. It's academic. Maybe it's fun or cool to know. Just don't belittle someone trying to say that it's low yield =p It really is, as is a lot in medicine.
Agreed. I may not have been as eloquent in my earlier posts, because they were one-liners. Honestly wasn't trying to belittle anyone. I apologize if anyone thought I was attacking them personally.
