A patient returns to the medical office after wearing a Holter monitor for 24 hours. He states that he forgot to depress the event marker when he was having chest pain due to extreme stress at the office, but he wrote this on the daily journal that he kept but forgot to note the time. Will the monitor tape be effective in this case? What is meant by an arrhythmia, and are all arrhythmias dangerous?
Ans) One of the most critical parts of the Holter monitor test is the patient diary. Patients are asked to keep a diary recording the timing and type of symptoms they have. These are then correlated with the tracings to see if symptoms and tracing abnormalities are related. One of the biggest issues with Holter monitoring is that patients often don’t keep an accurate diary that strongly limits interpretation of the monitor.
Holter Monitor Results
The Holter monitor will show the average heart rate, the fastest
and the slowest heart rate. It will detect pauses and their length.
It will catch fast heart rhythms and can often help to characterize
them. Importantly the reading cardiologist will go through the
patient diary and see if any heart tracing abnormalities were seen
at the time symptoms were recorded
- Of course the monitor can only catch something if it occurs during the period that it was worn within. For that reason, Holter monitors are typically best for those patients that have symptoms almost everyday. If symptoms are less frequent then the Holter monitor may not be as useful. Often however they are still used as the initial evaluation.
- Arrhythmias are abnormal beats. The term "arrhythmia" refers to any change from the normal sequence of electrical impulses, causing abnormal heart rhythms. Arrhythmias may be completely harmless or life-threatening.
A patient returns to the medical office after wearing a Holter monitor for 24 hours. He...
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