ecg changes 2 years post chest trauma

[Theresa12638]

Hello, I had chest trauma about 2.5 years ago. Left hemothorax, right pneumothorax. Bilateral chest tubes. Contusions to both lungs. Broke posterior ribs in 10 places. T8-9 fracture with spinal fusion. Also have currently a paralyzed right diaphragm. I was thrown from a horse, by the way. My blood pressure and heartrate is now fine, but recently had an incidental ecg which showed some very minor ST elevation and slight "right atrial enlargement". My family Doc said that since I am basically healthy and my vitals are great, he feels these slight changes on ecg are probably due to the chest trauma affecting the ecg signals. He said my heart is probably fine but the old trauma was preventing the tech from getting an accurate reading on the ecg. He said a nuclear stress test is the only way to tell for sure. My question: can old chest trauma affect the accuracy of future ecg's?

[Theresa12638]

Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately I do not have a prior ecg to compare. I had some chest pain determined to be epigastric, so that's why the current ecg. So scarring from the chest trauma would not in itself affect the ecg? Could the elevated right diaphragm would be causing a slightly different orientation of the heart?

[CCFHeart MD25]

Generally speaking, ECG's can have mainly different normal variations. There are many conditions not related to having a heart attack that can be associated with causing st segment changes. Most of these are considered benign. The important thing to do would be to compare an ECG from today to one prior to your accident. Another point is symptoms. ST elevations must be taken in the context of the patients symptoms. Trauma can change your ECG if it is associated with changing the orientation of your heart in the chest cavity.