Cardiac rhythm monitors help to decide if the palpitations arise from an arrhythmia or non-cardiac etiology. They may be brief or prolonged, sudden or insidious. The symptom may be in the chest, back, abdomen, throat, or neck. Patients may describe racing, fluttering, skipped beats, a flip-flop sensation, the heart-stopping, and many other feelings. Palpitations are the feeling that the heart is beating out of sync. In addition, a Holter may help discover the cause of chest pain, the risk of cardiac events related to congenital heart diseases, or lastly, to assess the efficacy of cardiac treatment.īefore further discussing Holter monitors, let us first talk briefly about palpitations. One may order a Holter monitor to look for arrhythmias as a cause of palpitations, passing out (syncope), or lightheadedness (near syncope), shortness of breath (dyspnea), or fatigue. Patients keep a diary to allow correlation of symptoms to the heart rhythm. A typical Holter monitors heart rhythms for 24-48 hours.
#48 hour heart monitor portable
Holter monitors are portable electrocardiographic (ECG) devices used to record heart rhythms. What Are Holter Monitors and Why Order Them? What should a provider expect from a Holter reading? This article outlines proper setup, patient instructions, and reading guidelines for Holter monitoring. From my perspective, the patient’s time and money, as well as my time, have been wasted. Nothing is more frustrating than receiving a report stating “arrhythmias seen, no diary submitted,” and then finding out from the patient that they were never asked to even keep a diary during monitoring. Example of an Appropriate Holter Reading.What Are Holter Monitors and Why Order Them?.