Age and the Electrocardiogram

The electrocardiographic tracing most familiar to physicians is the normal adult electrocardiogram. This tracing is remarkably stable once it assumes its mature stage and indeed one can use the electrocardiogram as a clear identifier of any one individual since, in the absence of intervening disease, the tracing remains identical when repeated again and again1. So stabIe is the electrocardiographic pattern for any one individual that it ranks with an individual’s fingerprints as proof of identityL