A pause followed by an escape beat restoring a regular rhythm describes which pattern?

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Multiple Choice

A pause followed by an escape beat restoring a regular rhythm describes which pattern?

This pattern shows sinus pause with escape rhythm. When the sinus node pauses or fails to fire for a moment, the heart doesn’t stop; a secondary pacemaker—usually at the AV junction or below—takes over and produces an escape beat. That escape beat restores a regular rhythm, but at a slower rate than the sinus rhythm. On an ECG you’d see a gap corresponding to the pause, followed by a beat with the escape focus’ characteristic QRS/P morphology, then the rhythm continues regularly again. This fits because the defining feature is a pause due to sinus node activity followed by an escape beat that re-starts the rhythm. It isn’t the pattern of progressively lengthening PR intervals with dropped beats (that would be Mobitz I), nor an early beat originating outside the normal rhythm (premature atrial contraction), and while sick sinus syndrome can include pauses, the specific sequence described aligns with a sinus pause followed by an escape rhythm.

This pattern shows sinus pause with escape rhythm. When the sinus node pauses or fails to fire for a moment, the heart doesn’t stop; a secondary pacemaker—usually at the AV junction or below—takes over and produces an escape beat. That escape beat restores a regular rhythm, but at a slower rate than the sinus rhythm. On an ECG you’d see a gap corresponding to the pause, followed by a beat with the escape focus’ characteristic QRS/P morphology, then the rhythm continues regularly again.

This fits because the defining feature is a pause due to sinus node activity followed by an escape beat that re-starts the rhythm. It isn’t the pattern of progressively lengthening PR intervals with dropped beats (that would be Mobitz I), nor an early beat originating outside the normal rhythm (premature atrial contraction), and while sick sinus syndrome can include pauses, the specific sequence described aligns with a sinus pause followed by an escape rhythm.

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