Good morning - if you are in a similar time zone!My Kardia arrived yesterday morning so of course I took many readings to try it out. I also tried it on my husband to see if it was working properly and it appears to be fine.
My own readings however are all over the shop, so I wondered if other people find this?
They are mainly 'unclassified', with a few 'possible AFib' and two 'bradycardia'. The heartbeat reading is usually 40 to 45, one was over 100 and three have been in the 70s.
My husband's readings are very neat and follow a distinct pattern. Mine show the spikes but they're very irregular with a lot of wiggles in between, a bit of a mess to be honest.
As I've said before, I don't want to be using it all the time and worrying about the readings, I just wondered if such a range of readings from 'possible AFib' to 'bradycardia' is usual?
Or am I doing something wrong? I have done the six lead on both my ankle and knee immediately following each other and they gave the same result. I've also done the one lead at the same time as the six lead on both my ankle and knee and got the same result.
I'm surprised about the low heartbeat rate. But when I have an ECG at the surgery my pulse rate is always very low even though my heart is racing away, so maybe that's what the Kardia is picking up.
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I have a Kardia 6 lead and the original one lead. I've always trusted it and yes, the traces can look messy but it seems accurate to me and has shown supraventricular ectopy so now I know what it is when I feel it happening and it always picks up Afib. You can pay to have a reading professionally analyzed any time you're worried. Not cheap at £9.99 but can be reassuring if you're worried.
I'm assuming you must be able to read the graph or have the care package if your Kardia shows supraventricular ectopy. I don't have the care package and can't interpret the graph so I am in the dark. I have an appointment with the cardiologist shortly and got the Kardia so I could show him readings.
I'm not worried, I suppose I had just expected it to be more consistent. The jump from possible AFib to Bradycardia seemed odd so I was wondering if that kind of reading was usual for other people or if maybe the machine was faulty.
My Apple Watch records heartbeats every few seconds. During an Afib episode it shows it plummeting quite low then it soars into the 130-160 range so maybe it is catching that?
Your Kardia has a 300 samples per second sampling rate and records continuously for at least 30 seconds. It should not misreport your HR for the same reason the Apple Watch might.
For the recordings you take it is advisable to advise test outcome and the associated heart rate together. It will assist in understanding your results e.g. unexplained high heart rate makes sense when combined with possible Atrial Fibrillation i.e. AF episode normally accompanied by high HR. HR in 40's should report as bradycardia. Unclassified can be for a number of reasons but generally not if Possible AF, normal sinus rhythm, bradycardia or tachycardia. It might be some other arrythmia detected or an error, so you should repeat test. If you continue to get unclassified as a result then you should refer to a medical professional to review ECG recording in case it has detected another form of arrythmia.
I don’t think a Kardia can be faulty but some people get a ‘cleaner’ trace than others. My husband produced an absolute classic trace at 60bpm in spit of having two large abdominal aortic aneurysms! Mine is downright weird, you have to use a bit of imagination to see the ‘p’ wave in NSR for a start. I suspect this may be the result of a very extensive ablation and a ‘cardiac event’ poss MI type 2. So probably your heart is doing that (bradycardia to normal rate) and the cardiologist will be very interested to see it. If you are taking a 30 second trace try taking a 5 minute one, although the Kardia only analyses the first 30 seconds the longer recording can show a lot. I suspect you are having a lot of ectopics which Kardia can find confusing.
I've had my single lead Kardia for many years, in fact I'm on my second ( I wore out the first...). The device is normally very reliable . I would be inclined to get your readings clarified. Maybe GP surgery first port of call?
It is very important to have clean contact. I was advised to use hand sanitiser prior to use and also to ensure you are not close to any electronic things. Failure can result in what are deemed "artifacts" and interference.
If just doing the 2 finger contact check I find it's good to moisten the finger tips first to ensure good electrical contact. Also be sure to sit very still and relax as any movement or muscle twitching will affect the trace as electricle muscle activity is also picked up.
Are you trying to determine if you're in afib? If so, send the ekg's with "possible afib" to your ep for confirmation. If the single lead is cleaner, send that one.
Hi Jim,I wasn't really trying to do anything other than get used to using the machine, but the readings are so widely varied over the last day that I wondered if it was usual to go from poss AFib to bradycardia within minutes or the other way round.
Anything is possible, but the important thing to remember is that Kardia's ekg interpretations are not perfect. If you really want to know if it's afib or not, send the ekg to your ep.
Could you post a picture. All over the shop is AF. Racing, pausing, slow. All describe what I see when I have AF. Whereas lots of little squiggles and a trace that goes haywire are electrical interference - although kardia should say that - if it's happening.
Rather than squiggles it's a wiggly base line, lots of little bumps kind of. One of my many ECGs at the surgery had a lot of them with few beats, and I was told it was my heart trying to fire up and not getting there.I was surprised to see so many of them on the Kardia ECGs, which is why I wondered if it's usual.
The Kardia is excellent and so very convenient, too, but you do need good contact with the electrodes and I think some people's skin is less good at creating this. Also, like you, I too often received "Unclassified" readings. In my case this turned out to be because my heartbeat has what is called a "Wide QRS" caused by my also having what's called "left branch bundle block". The only way out of this was for me to ay the extra monthly fee for "Advanced Determinations". I recommend you to try this.
Eventually, I changed the Kardia for a Wellue device which uses AI for analysis and has the option for using noise-free chest or wrist electrodes.
Yes, you are right. The "wide QRS" required the Kardia "Advanced Determinations" to show up when I owned it and a wide QRS with a heart rate over 100bpm also seems to bring the unhelpful "Unclassified" response from it. I think if people have only paroxysmal AF then they would find either the Kardia or Apple Watch (or, indeed, the much lower-priced AI Wellue device) to be entirely useful.
Why not check your pulse manually (or use a pulse oximeter) to see if it agrees with the Kardia? Have any of the recordings said that you have AF? Another option would be to send the EKG to your GP or cardiac nurses for analysis.
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