ECG/EKG -- rather humerous/ doctors handwriting, or lack thereof

[Guest guest]

So, one of my former neurologists, retired, is a personal friend.I phoned him to ask about this ECG/EKG thing.He is now 86 and his memory goes back a long way--way backbefore even typewriters were commonly used by physicians andother medical staff, e.g. nurses, technicians, anaesthesiologists, et al.His first name is Bob; Bob told me that way back then when everysingle order was hand written, often in cursive (longhand), not evenprinted (joke about doctors' handwriting here), that when the term"ECG" or (worse) "ecg" was used that the acronym was often mistaken for "eeg," a test for epilepsy: EEG. So, as no one was successful at getting doctors always to write in clear print and in capitalletters (as even pharmacists today can

attest to, he commented),it was decided to refer to ECG instead of EKG, to avoid confusion.He said that this change was made by many Latin American Countries,and in the Mediterranean (makes more sense in Greek, anyway), heobserved.So, I thanked Bob, and asked a friend of ours who is a cardiologist--same explanation.Deduction: physicians and surgeons and medical staff throughoutthe British empire and its former colonies and dominions had betterhandwriting than anyone. . .my husband wrote in superb calligraphichand, as does one of my daughters--but--you guessed it--none ofthem is/was a physician!Love to you all, and particularly to ,n--without a LINK!