SJLD Jan 18, 2009:

Steiltyp I thought the translation for this was "vertical heart"?

Siegfried Armbruster Jan 15, 2009:

Is it a German report, or Swiss or Austrian, was it written by a paramedic or is it a report that just accompanies the patient. You might well find that all this info is not our business, but in this case you have to live with answers as given below

Siegfried Armbruster Jan 15, 2009:

Ok, now I'm really getting confused. I have workes as a paramedic in Germany before I became a Notarzt, I have not met 1 Paramedic in all these years who took a ECG and wrote down "tc SR 123/', SL, SIQIII", so could you please give us some more context.

MMUlr Jan 15, 2009:

My 2 cents: I second Siegfried in his suggestion that SL --> standard leads - maybe as a small "introduction" to the following data!?

NKW (X) (asker) Jan 15, 2009:

Herr Armbruster, the case relates to a patient diagnosed, following diagnostic imaging investigations, as suffering from a pulmonary embolism (PE). This ECG was performed prior to those investigations and appears to be perfectly normal practice for any paramedic.
Just to avoid any further confusion, the text "between inverted commas" is that shown in the source document, as explained in the question. Remaining comments are the result of a web search, which yielded a hit that states that these S- and Q-wave patterns are consistent with a PE (the diagnosis in this report), which explains the use of the 'SIQIII' abbreviation, which did not form part of my question.
I am entirely confident that the source text reads "SL".
As for the ways in which paramedics use their time, I am sure that their time-management is scrutinised by their managers and that we do not need to concern ourselves with that matter in this context.
Thank you for your contribution to the debate.

Siegfried Armbruster Jan 15, 2009:

Had he nothing better to do, such as saving the patient? What other findings do you have, a bit more context might help.

Siegfried Armbruster Jan 15, 2009:

I'm just curious, what kind of paramedic is this, a) he seems to know how to write a standard ECD and to produce a diagnosis S1-Q3-Type - Did the paramedic diagnose a "pulmonary embolism" based on this?

Siegfried Armbruster Jan 15, 2009:

Are you sure it means "SL" and not "SI"? If it reads SL it might mean "Standard-Leads" meaning that the standard number of electrodes at standard locations was used. Otherwise the next statement SIQIII would make no sense anyway. - Just a wild guess.

NKW (X) (asker) Jan 15, 2009:

Source text The source text reads "tc" [TC] not "to" [TO]. I can see now how that confusion arose, as the two characters look very similar on-screen. I assume that 'tc' denotes tachycardia.

casper (X) Jan 15, 2009:

Are the paramedic's notes in English, NickKW ? I ask because the quoted source text reads: "to..."