Palpitations versus Atrial Fibrillation ?

[Fitbit-Joe]

Over the years, I have had a number of Palpitations, which sometimes they keep me awake, and constant every few seconds.

I recently bought myself a Kardia 6 lead ECG Monitor, so I could keep a watch on my heart rhythms, and if this would show up any problems needing looked at

Over a few days, there was a indication of possible Atrial Fibrillation, which my first thought, I having really bad palpitations

With palpitations, I have never thought, this might be Atrial Fibrillation, so never even brought this up with my doctor

Im seeing cardiologist sometime in April, to get a number of tests done, and guess this is something I will bring up, and show him the graphs

I have enclosed a photo, with the top reading being the palpitation, and the bottom one is the possible Atrial Fibrillation

[mjames1]

No one here is qualified to read an ekg, so disregard any posted diagnosis, including mine, however I will take a shot Both look like bigeminy, which is basically an ectopic, every other beat and not afib.

What you want to do is have the ekg's -- preferably all six leads -- read by an ep, rather than a cardiologist or gp. And even ep's sometimes have a hard time differentiating different arrythmia's.

Jim

[BobD Volunteer]

Just to clarify. Palpitations merely means that a person is aware of their heart beating. It has no medical meaning. or diagnosis.

Atrial fibrillation is a chaotic non rhythm typified by the absence of a p wave. As Jim mentions,. automatic machine diagnosis is seldom more than a suggestion but I am sure I can see p waves in the traces you give so agree with his comments.

[Palpman]

Looks like Bigaminy to me on both.

[Palpman]

The heart rate seems to be about 40 bpm. When I have bradycardia my heart tends to start with strange ectopics.

[Hephzibar]

Out of interest, what did the Kardia say it was? Arythmia, possible afib or sinus rhythm?

[frazeej in reply to Hephzibar]

The Kardia apparently said possible afib on the gentlman's lower trace that he posted. I think that's incorrect, I think both traces show as a classic bigeminy-regular irregularity in pairs, definite P waves.

[Ppiman]

Those look like ectopic beats that are coming in with regularity since the overall pulse is regular, which it wouldn't be with AF. I get this pretty much daily at present and it feels no different from AF to me (which I get much less often and at a low-ish pulse so isn't too symptomatic at all).

As I understand it, an ectopic beat is one that arises when a normal heart cell takes on a pacemaker-like function temporarily and causes the ventricles to contract before the usual next beat; this is followed by a "compensatory pause" until the next regular ventricular beat comes in. This allows time for extra blood to flow into the ventricles creating a more powerful valve closure, which can feel like a "thump".

Kardia doesn't label as "palpitations", so I guess you typed that into the image? A palpitation is just a noticeable heart beat whereas an ectopic beat (which can be a part of palpitations) is a premature beat.

Steve

[Mugsy15]

Again I am not qualified to interpret, but I must say that to my untrained eye those two traces look almost identical.