Need to buy a good heart monitor

[Julie23]

Hi there folks can anyone recommend a good heart monitor on here I feel I need to keep an eye on it till operation ?

[JenniferJane]

Omron M2 Basic Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor - I bought this from Amazon, around £22. Basic, but works fine.

Good luck.

Jenni

[rosyG]

Alivecor is best at present I think

[BobD Volunteer]

BP monitors seldom give accurate readings if you are in AF. If you are determined to monitor yourself then Alivecor may be your best option although I always tell people that it is all too easy to become OCD about self testing.

[jondeanp in reply to BobD]

Totally agree with Bob especially if you've had no previous experience with monitoring your HR.

If you are waiting for a procedure to deal with AF then the readings you see may likely be erratic (the monitors generally can't cope with AF) and could cause more anxiety than necessary.

[jeanjeannie50]

My monitor bought at Boots (their own make) has been brilliant and very accurate.

[heartmatters1 in reply to jeanjeannie50]

& it also has irregular heartbeat & hypertension detection. I find mine brilliant too.

[Marion62]

My husband also uses an Omron M2 basic upper arm - it was on sale recently at half price in ASDA £10.

[AnticoagulateNow]

Is it heart rate (HR) you want to monitor Jean or blood pressure (BP)? If BP then an upper arm monitor is always more reliable than a wrist monitor and I too can vouch for the Omron.

For HR, any of the athletic sports watches will do this and they are available from a few pounds to a few hundred pounds. Nowadays the cheap ones are pretty reliable for a simple HR check. Some of them are now dispensing with the familiar chest strap, taking the reading from the wrist though, at present, these tend to be at the more expensive end of the market.

But and it's a big but, as Bob pointed out above, they are all pretty useless when you are in AF because most of them are unable to cope with an irregular signal and will simply return the last available 'gap' measurement which may bear no relationship to actual 'average' HR. This problem also applies to BP monitors. The Alivecor is an HR monitor, not a BP monitor, but it is designed to cope with AF and will provide a more accurate HR as well as ECG readouts etc.

For HR, there's probably no better thing than to count your pulse for 30 seconds and multiply by 2. Tried, tested and cheap.... and works in AF too!

[soupersue]

Lidl are doing one now for under £20. I have had one of theirs for two years and it is as good as any. It also tells you when you are in AF. As Bob says easy to become addicted to it but I grew out of the need to check twice a day and now only use mine if I feel 'odd'.

[SongPlayer68]

can recommend the OMRON 10-IT blood pressure monitor. Omron is a high quality Japanese company, though the monitor is assembled in China. It detects Atrial Fibrillation and will give a blood pressure and pulse reading if it can. Sometimes due to AFib it displays an 'E' for error, if the detected pulse and blood pressure levels are too erratic.

When in AFib the pulse readings are always inaccurate on any monitor, no matter how expensive or professional, unless the readings are taken for a full 60 seconds. In practise, perhaps ten seconds are sampled and the figure is then multiplied by six inside the monitor to simulate a full minute. That is why 2 consecutive readings are wildly different, because in one 10-second period there may be, for example, 11 beats,(=66) and the next 10 seconds may produce a flurry of 25 beats (150). The daily measurements can be transferred to a computer and printed out without having to buy a special program - it's all included.

Boots sell this Monitor for £113 but Amazon were recently selling it for £46 delivered, and a reliable company called Medisave.co.uk sell it for for £56 delivered.

Hope I have been helpful,

SongPlayer 68