In 1962, the hospital purchased a Shanghai-made electrocardiograph (ECG) and set it up in the internal medicine ward, mainly for the use of patients in the ward. 1964, the ECG room was set up; 1980, the first electroencephalograph (EEG) machine was purchased; April 1993, the Department of Functional Medicine (DFM) was established; 1993, a set of ambulatory electrocardiograph (AEC) machines was introduced; and 2004, an electromyography (EMG) machine was purchased. Nowadays, the department consists of ECG room, dynamic ECG room, EEG room and EMG room, with the following equipments: four ECG machines, two sets of dynamic ECG, one EEG machine and one EMG machine.

    Electrocardiography is of definite value in the diagnosis of arrhythmia and conduction disorders, and has high accuracy in the diagnosis of myocardial infarction, and is also helpful in the diagnosis of atrial hypertrophy, myocarditis, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery insufficient blood supply and pericarditis.

    Electroencephalograph is mainly applied to the diagnosis and auxiliary diagnosis of epilepsy, intracranial tumour, craniocerebral trauma, cerebrovascular disease and central nervous system infection.

    EMG Evoked Potential Instrument provides electrophysiological diagnosis for neurological and muscular diseases, and is widely used in the fields of Neurology, Rehabilitation, Orthopaedics, Occupational Diseases, Sports Medicine, Psychiatry and Paediatrics.

    The Functional Department has a total of five staff members, including three physicians, one nurse practitioner and one technician. Technician Han Haiying has published ‘Analysis of 36 cases of specific ST-T changes in young patients’. Nurse Song Hongxia has achieved scientific research results such as ‘Research on the value of determining prognosis in different parts of early acute myocardial infarction with mitral regurgitation’.