Convenience
Cardiac arrhythmias are often sudden, unpredictable, and transient. Frequently, the abnormal heart rhythm has converted to normal sinus rhythm before the patient reaches the doctor's office or the hospital emergency room. Diagnosing arrhythmias is therefore often difficult and multiple visits to the doctor's office or ER are often necessary to document the arrhythmia. By owning their own electrocardiographic recorder, patients can now immediately record their rhythms themselves whenever an abnormal rhythm suddenly develops.
Real Time Monitoring
Real time recordings with iHeartRhythm permit direct correlation of symptoms caused by arrhythmias with the arrhythmia displayed on the computer screen. For example, you may experience an episode of dizziness while a very slow heart rate is displayed on the screen, documenting your need for a permanent pacemaker. Or you may experience a palpitation exactly when a premature beat is displayed, confirming that your palpitations are due to ventricular or atria premature beats. These observations, documented with your computer, help your physician correlate your symptoms with specific arrhythmias, facilitating better choice of antiarrhythmic therapy.
Economy
Event recorders, Holter monitors and 12-lead electrographs cost thousands of dollars and are available only in doctors' offices and hospitals. The cost of digital components has fallen in recent years making it possible for indivdual patients to own their own EKG rhythm recorder. Rapid recordings with iHeartRhythm make detection of abnormal heart rhythms faster, more efficient, and economical.
Detection of Abnormal Heart Rhythms
iHeartRhythm recordings can detect all abnormal heart rhythms including sinus tachycardia, sinus bradycardia, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, premature atrial beats, premature ventricular beats, premature junctional beats, first degree AV-block, second degree AV-block, third degree AV-block, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, multifocal atrial tachycardia, bundle branch block, junctional tachycardia, wandering atrial pacemaker, and supraventricular tachycardia.
Atrial Fibrillation
The most common clinically significant arrhythmia is atrial fibrillation which causes palpitations, irregular tachycardia, lower cardiac output, fatigue, and shortness of breath. Most importantly, atrial fibrillation can cause devastating thromboembolic strokes, occasionally resulting in hemiplegia and aphasia. Many patients with atrial fibrillation however, cannot tell when they are in atrial fibrillation.
Using iHeartRhythm to record their rhythm daily, patients with a history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can now detect atrial fibrillation sooner. Earlier detection of atrial fibrillation may reduce the likelihood of stroke because patients can be started sooner on anticoagulant medications and antiarrhythmic agents.
Monitoring Antiarrhythmic Drug Effectiveness
Antiarrhythmic medications are frequently prescribed to suppress abnormal heart rhythms but have an efficacy rate of only about 60%. Often one antiarrhythmic agent after another is prescribed until an effective drug is identified. Evaluating the effectiveness of different antiarrhythmic medications is clinically based on patients' perceived symptoms and a single EKG recorded at each office visit, which are typically weeks apart.
Daily recordings of the heart rhythm with iHeartRhythm provide much more objective evaluation of the efficacy of antiarrhythmic drugs. A patient can record his electrocardiographic rhythm daily and print the rhythms for his physician to review.
Accessories included with iHeartRhythm
- iHeartRhythm Recorder
- 3-lead electrode cable
- Electrocardiographic electrode gel (60g)
- 6 packages of 3 disposable electrodes
- 3 reusable suction-cup electrodes
- USB cable (1.5m)
- Software CD
- Manual
