Watch BP Home A blood pressure monitor?

[davythom]

Hi All, has anyone bought\used a "Watch BP Home A blood pressure monitor"? The blurb says that it detects Atrial Fibrillation as well as checking blood pressure and is very accurate, not sure how true that is, any advice?

[BobD Volunteer]

My advice so not to go the route of home testing as it becomes all too easy to get OCD about it and this only increases stress levels and can make AF worse. I speak from personal experience! I always knew if I was in AF anyway so what was the point. I still have BP monitor but only use it every six months or so when my doctors asks me for a seven day chart. Others may disagree of course.

Bob

[Mamamarilyn in reply to BobD]

Totally support your comments Bob. One can get fixated!

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Two things, I bought a Watch BP monitor and had to return it for a refund. It didn't work at all. Quite probably I just got a faulty one but didn't ask for a replacement because I never trust anything like that twice.

On the heart rate monitoring. I have 3 monitors bought primarily for cycling. One chest strap monitor, one quite expensive wrist monitor and a cheap-as-chips finger monitor. They all work well under normal circumstances, but none of them give true readings when I'm having an arrhythmia. During AF, the chest strap monitor will jump up to 200 (when I know I'm not anywhere near that level), sticks there, then suddenly drops like a stone back to normal. The wrist strap does something else, can't remember what.

I asked an EP at the Patients Day why this was and he said home/sports monitors cannot work when in AF for some reason. Not sure I remember correctly, but I think he said because they cannot detect what is a beat and what isn't, so they count small fibrillations (presumably) as beats. His advice was to simply go with how you feel.

I still wear the wrist version sometimes because I want/need to know my heart rate, but if I had an arrhythmia at the time, I ignore what it says or even take it off.

Koll

[Hidden]

I agree whole-heartedly. Good organic food freshly sourced goes a long way to health and well-being.

[EngMac]

The blood pressure machine I have shows an irregular heart rate with an icon of a wobbly heart. The pulse rate is not correct and neither is the blood pressure reading. The EKG device I have shows the waveform and the correct heart rate.

[davythom in reply to EngMac]

Thanks for that EngMac