Welch Allyn CP 150 ECG Machine with 10 Lead ECG Lead

Welch Allyn CP 150 Resting Electrocardiograph with 10 Lead Patient Cable, Pre-Owned

The Welch Allyn CP 150 is a resting electrocardiograph for primary care, occupational health and outpatient clinics. It records a diagnostic quality trace, previews it on a 7 inch colour touchscreen before anything is printed, and produces a full size printout on Z-fold thermal paper. It is supplied here with the 10 lead patient cable.

The naming is worth clearing up, because it causes more ordering errors than any other detail on an ECG machine. A 10 lead cable has ten lead wires and ten electrodes on the patient: one on each limb and six across the chest. Those ten electrodes produce the twelve views a clinician reads, so a 10 lead cable and a 12 lead ECG are the same thing described from different ends. A machine without its cable records nothing at all, which is why the cable is the accessory that decides whether a used ECG machine is usable on arrival.

In practice the CP 150 earns its place on three things. Instant-on means a trace can be taken the moment a patient is on the couch rather than after a boot sequence. The preview before print means a poor trace is spotted and repeated on screen rather than on paper, which on a busy clinic day is a real saving in both paper and time. And the lead quality monitoring flags a poor electrode connection before the recording, which is the difference between a clean trace and a repeat.

Connectivity is by USB and Ethernet as standard, with a CardioPerfect workstation route for storing and reviewing tests on a PC, and at least 100 tests held in the device itself. Battery operation gives around eight hours or roughly 250 recordings per charge, so the machine travels to the patient rather than the other way round.

References

Features

• 7 inch colour touchscreen at 800 by 480, used for patient data entry and for previewing the trace, which removes the keypad fumbling that slows older machines.
• Preview before print, in 3, 6 or full 12 lead views, so a poor recording is caught on screen and repeated rather than printed and thrown away.
• Instant-on, so a trace can be started the moment the patient is ready rather than after a boot sequence.
• Lead quality monitoring, checking each electrode connection and prompting before the recording, which is where most repeat traces come from.
• Full size printout on Z-fold thermal paper, 21 by 28 cm, which is the format most UK practices file and post.
• At least 100 tests stored in the device, with export to a USB memory stick or to a CardioPerfect workstation.
• Standard and Cabrera lead configurations, so the output matches local reporting convention.
• Advanced filtering, with a 35 Hz muscle tremor filter, a 0.5 Hz high performance baseline filter and selectable 50 or 60 Hz mains interference rejection.
• Common mode rejection above 80 dB, which is what keeps a trace clean in a room full of other electrical equipment.
• Battery operation, around 8 hours of continuous use or 250 recordings per charge, recharging to most of its capacity in about 4 hours.
• USB and Ethernet connectivity as standard, with one USB client port and four USB host ports.

Important notice

Verify before clinical use. This is a diagnostic measuring device. On receipt, confirm the machine records a clean trace on all twelve leads using a simulator or a known good subject, check the printout against the on-screen trace, and confirm the date, time and paper speed settings are correct before any recording is filed in a patient record. Electrical safety testing, including patient applied part leakage, is carried out as for any pre-owned mains powered medical device. No calibration certificate accompanies this unit, and ongoing maintenance and periodic testing sit with the operating organisation under PUWER 1998.

Interpretation is decision support, not a diagnosis. Where a machine is fitted with the MEANS interpretation option, the statements it prints are a second opinion generated by an algorithm and are always overread by a clinician competent to report an ECG. An uninterpreted trace is not a normal trace, and an interpreted one is not a confirmed diagnosis. Whether this individual machine carries the interpretation option is confirmed before dispatch, since the CP 150 was sold in both configurations and the two are visually identical.

Cables, electrodes and hygiene. Check the patient cable and every lead wire for damaged insulation, bent pins and cracked connectors before each use, since a damaged cable produces artefact that can be mistaken for pathology. Electrodes are single use and are never reapplied between patients. Lead wire colour coding differs between the AHA and IEC standards, so confirm which standard the supplied cable follows before it is used by staff trained on the other, and clean the cable and the machine to local decontamination policy between patients.