Twenty-three minutes into CPR, the electrocardiogram of an 82-year-old man in China showed something rarely captured on paper. Instead of one heart rhythm, the tracing carried two, each running at its own speed and neither disturbing the other.
One electrical pattern fired at 35 beats per minute. The other ran at 78. Huayong Jin of the electrocardiology department at Shaoxing People's Hospital and Yudan Wen of the electrocardiology department at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University described the case in a report published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders on Dec. 30, 2024. They identified it as ventricular separation, an electrical phenomenon unusual enough that the paper's title calls it rare.
