Dr. Smith's ECG Blog

Instructive ECGs in Emergency Medicine Clinical Content

Associate Editors:
— Pendell Meyers & Ken Grauer (2018)
— Jesse McLaren & Emre Aslanger (2022)
— Willy Frick (2024) — Sam Ghali (2025)

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Right Bundle Branch Block with ST Elevation in V1?

There is a wide QRS with a tall R-wave in aVR and V1 and wide S-wave in lateral leads, leading one to believe this is RBBB.  There is ST elevation in V1, and ST depression in V4-V6, suggestive of ischemia/MI.   What is the Diagnosis? –see Below


This is a classic pseudoinfarction pattern — hyperkalemia, with K of 6.9 due to DKA (pH 7.12, bicarb 6).  In this case the diagnosis was easy because the patient presented very ill with known Type I diabetes and with vomiting, not chest pain.

However, here are two from my files that presented with chest pain:

The peaked T-waves give it away, but the ST elevation in V1 and V2 is a little known pseudoinfarction pattern.  There was no MI here.
Thanks to K. Wang for this EKG.  Again, there was no MI, only hyperkalemia.

In all 3 of these cases, the findings disappeared with treatment of hyperkalemia, and the ECG normalized.

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