weird ecg

[jan-ran]

Hi folks. I'm new here, but was in the old yahoo group for some years. I have paroxysmal af, I take bisoprolol and warfarin. I'm quite old! Anyway, now I've found you, I have a question. I opted to do the Alivecor heart beat/rate monitoring thing 3 months ago. Neat little gadget, showed up normal sinus rhythm and af quite nicely. For the past couple of weeks something seems to have changed. I haven't had a full on af episode for three weeks, and it's usually weekly. But I am getting almost continual thumps and bumps during the day, which at first I thought were ectopics. The readings on the Alivecor monitor are showing peaks which point downwards in between the normal upward pointing peaks. These peaks coincide with the bumps I can feel. I haven't seen this before and I'm wondering if anyone knows what's happening here? Thanks for reading, JanR

[BobD Volunteer]

Hi Jan. downwards peaks are ectopics. Good that you found us here and hope to see you on 19th march.. My Alive cor is problematic in that half the time it gives me totally stupid readings like a magintude ten earthquake and only shows the last three or four beats if I'm lucky. Probably either a faulty one or my hands don't conduct too well. Not sure to be honest. We should compare in March.

Cheers

Bob

[jan-ran]

Thanks bob. Is there any treatment, should I be worried and could the ectopics go away some time? I appreciate your input, we can certainly compare notes re alive or. Janr

[BobD Volunteer]

Hi Jan, generally Ectopics are not a big issue. Sabine Ernst once told me that they were a sign that the heart was trying to go into AF and failing. Everybody gets up to 200 a day but only we darned AFers seem to notice them. Mine became very troublesome to the point where I contacted my EP again as they were every third beat,--- one two hang on a minute, one two etc which is very off putting when you are trying to sleep! I had a 24 hour monitor but of course they had gone and hidden by the time that was arranged. I had them for three months or more to the point where I put myself back on propafanone which controlled them but when I stopped that a week before the holter I found they had gone.. I will tell you more when I see you.

Bob