Thank you to everyone who replied to my post re Apple watch and Kardia. I decided on the Kardia 6 as part of the kit mainly because cardiologists seem to think they are accurate.
I am still not decided on the watch yet. I havnt been diag with AF yet as some may remember , Ectopics yes , and they are dramatically better since dramatically reducing alcohol from around 50 units on holiday to about 3-4 units/week , possibly flutter but nothing on a ECG yet , treatment plan is pill in pocket as I have had a few hours of 150 BPM on a few occasions but none since reducing alcohol.
Reading up on Apple watch and watching vids and reading medical papers it seems that although it may notify AFIB from periodic checks the notifications they may not be accurate ie false positives and maybe false negatives, not sure how useful that is?. If symptomatic and know its a attack then watch can do and send to doc, but seems Kardia ECG's are more accurate and more widely accepted. So , for me I wonder if a watch that just alerts me to high or low beats might be the best plan and if I get a attack do a Kardio 6 if convenient and if not convenient do a ECG on the watch. As far as I understand the way the watch works is you can have alert for high and low BPM on and AFIB notifications at the same time. Also if the AFIB notifications are not live ie come in a few days later how do you know if they are real or not and presumably by then its too late to do a ECG or does it automatically do a ECG on the historical ones, I doubt that ?
The beef I have with the Apple is mainly the battery life , 18 hours on the 9 on if other apps not on, dont know how long it would last if displaying heart rate 24/7 and sending high and low bpm alerts. The ULtra 2 lasts about double that without apps on but is heavy and big and maybe not so comfortable to sleep with and its £800 (the 9 is £300) , I already have a nice watch so only need the heart bits of the Apple watch.
I looked at Fitbit and it seems the Sense 2 has something like 5+ days battery life (maybe less with certain apps on) and costs about £170, they report something like 98% accuracy re certain AFIB or heart readings (not clear on exactly what 98% accuracy refers to) Alleg it does ECG and alerts for high/low bpm and AFIB also . So as some who doesnt need other things Apple does is the Fitbit as good as or better , of course getting the right heart stuff is the priority.
Any views welcome and thanks for reading
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The ULtra 2 lasts about double that without apps on but is heavy and big and maybe not so comfortable to sleep with and its £800 (the 9 is £300)
First, I think you made the right choice and you are going to get a lot out of the Kardia 6L, right out of the box , with very little learning curve.
But for the future, or others trying to make a decision, Apple Watch does offer a lot, and especially the Ultra 2. if you can get beyond the sticker shock.
Better capacity is actually three times that of the series 9. (It can run for three days.). And it can charge from zero to full in just in a few hours with the fast charger, which means you can wear it 23 hours a day if you want.
Yes it's big, but that makes for a bigger screen which I love. As for comfort, I sleep with it all the time and with a soft fabric strap, you will never notice it's on your wrist. In fact, I had a check if I was on my wrist just before writing this. 😄
I can see you like your Ultra 😀, As a ex engineer i suppose I am trying to see if the Apple does any more than the Fitbit in terms of heart business or is any more accurate. I know Apple Watch can almost run your life if needed but I only use about 10% of what my iPhone and iPad can do, hence I just need the heart bits. If the Apple does the heart things better than Fit bit then it’s a no brainer, but I don’t see that evidence so far.
None of the wearable devices can do an automatic ECG, it has to be started manually by forming the electrical circuit across your body with a finger on wheel from your other hand.
If you get an alert you will most likely still be in AF (if it is AF) as it decides to alert you after seeing signs of irregular heart beat several times. If the irregular beat stops before the alert is triggered then you are unlikely to get an alert at all.
The alert comes from the less accurate background checks via the optical sensors and then you can do an ECG electrically for an accurate trace.
It was the alert that first made me aware of my PAF but since then I have always been able to feel something suspicious and capture on the ECG app.
You can also tell from a basic heart rate monitor when you’re irregular as the figure will be jumping about, it’s identifying the type of arrhythmia that the ECG is needed for.
I guess it depends on what you want to use it for and what type of AF you've got.
I did an ECG every four hours on my Apple watch and recorded the average HR on a spreadsheet. That meant I could show the doctor a picture of what was going on, how often it happened and how long it lasted for each time.
He looked at it and said I was an ideal candidate for an ablation.
Because I always had my watch with me it was easy to do. My AF was quite simple, the ECGs didn't need much interpretation so no need for anything more complex. I didn't need warnings as I knew when it started each time but not when it stopped. That's what the spreadsheet picked up.
It was a game changer for me. Now I mainly use it for the timer.
I'm not a medical professional but I believe it is uncommon for AF episodes to occur without elevated HR, especially if not on daily beta blocker.
If you did have episodes of AF with normal HR then your strategy of using device with HR warning will not help you to do ECG of episodes. Even if it did, I can't see why you would need alert to take PIP for rate control if HR is normal.
I have paroxysmal AF and when I have episodes I can feel it but it's not overwhelming, mainly because of daily medications blunting their impact. However, because I can feel it I just use one of my devices (Withings Scanwatch and/or Kardia 6L) to confirm and then monitor, so I can provide info to my cardiologist during annual checkup about frequency, HR and duration.
IMO in the first instance you just need the Kardia 6L to use when you feel your symptoms (elevated HR). The Kardia will make an ECG record, which includes your HR and tell you whether you have arrythmia, including whether your ECG shows signs of AF. You can then provide the ECG to your doctor for formal diagnosis and treatment.
When you have been diagnosed then you can make an informed decision about the way forward including the purchase of any other devices.
Hands down Kardia for me. I had intense Afib, flutter, A-tachycardia and the Apple Watch missed a lot. Has mentioned, you still have to turn it on to check. The data was much more revealing in details as well with Kardia. My PERSONAL experieince nonetheless, others are clearly pleased! Good luck!
Fitbit here, easy to use, good battery life and it cost me £50 in a sale at Curry's, and its pink! lol. I am amazed at how clever it is, had the chance of Apple as all my techs are Apple but now very pleased I went for my humble Fitbit.
If you already have Apple iPhone, which many think the best kind of mobile phone, then the Apple Watch is second to none. The battery life is a non-issue in my case since it charges so quickly and easily sitting at the bedside acting as a bedside clock overnight. The "irregular heartbeat" warning would alert to AF or ectopic beats, I would think, if they are persistent, as mine are.
The Kardia is excellent, but the Apple Watch is also FDA approved so will be as "accurate", whatever that means in practice. It is also always with you to catch arrhythmias at any time of day (or night if you keep it on in bed).
The handheld Wellue AI device is only £70.00 at present, if I recall, and detects AF and a lot of other arrhythmias as well. Their 24-hour AI device misses nothing, of course and acts like a Holter monitor. The AI is FDA approved, I have read.
If you end up like me, you will buy them all! They all sell easily on eBay, too, for a good price, so allowing to try out without great loss.
the thing is I want to wear the watch as much of 24/7 as poss, also to check sleep Apnea which I alleg have, Ive ordered the Kardia 6 and a Fitbit sense 2 mainly for the 6-7 day battery, I will see how it goes, I like the idea of the Wellue AI as i red it can pick up and differentiate between PVC's and AF etc which the others done seem to do.?
Yes will probably have all the machines eventually and a Apple watch on one wrist and a Fit bit on the other and third on my ankle 😂
The Kardia will tell you a range of possible diagnoses but for more the company require you to make a monthly payment, so I would wait and see how it goes before paying for this. It's partly why, in the end, I switched to the Wellue AI (which has a truly wide range of diagnoses), but also as it had a 24-hour recording possibility (which it then distils into a neat summary with a clip of the longer ECG trace to show an example of each arrhythmia it picks up). I notice that Wellue also produce a sleep apnoea device, but the reviews on it were more variable.
Can I ask you which model of Wellue you have, and when you say it has wide range of diagnosis what does that include. I set up the Kardia 6 today and it says it now does other ectopics not just AF. When I bought it I bought the one year thing for £99 but on reading the small print you can only send a ECG to be read professionally every quarter, how ridiculous, note to heart , only act up once a quarter.
Can I also ask you re the Apple watch up to what BPM will it report AF, I set up the Fitbit today but noticed it will only send AF alerts if beats are over 50 under 120 which seems pretty limiting considering my heart has gone to 150-160 three times this year already, the ECG seems to work nicely though
I had atrial flutter in early 2019 and an ablation in the summer of that year. I already had an Apple Watch but, in 2021, I started to get bouts of racing with palpitations (90-135bpm), so I bought a Kardia 6L as well. That roved frustrating and too often returned a report of "Inconclusive" unless I paid a monthly fee for "Advanced Determinations"., which then showed "Wide QRS with NSR. I learned that this was because I also had "left branch bundle block" (LBBB).
Someone here recommended the Wellue AI 24-hour monitor, made by a company called Viatom. This overcomes the 30 second limit of the others and had no monthly fee. It proved excellent, and the AI analysis was amazing. It is less easy to use, however, since it requires either a chest strap or, as I use, two ECG chest electrodes. It also needs a PC or laptop (MacBook or Windows) to see the results.
Then the company added free AI analysis to all their models, which work with mobile hone apps like the Kardia. I bought the "Touchscreen ECG Monitor" which is the Wellue name for the "Viatom Pulsebit EX". This has a visible screen to see the ECG immediately and then uses a mobile phone app to retrieve the AI analysis. It's very similar to the Kardia in operation with fingertip operation, but has a 5-minute option using ECG electrodes on the wrists or chest.
Both devices can identify the following using their FDA approved AI algorithm, and, so far as I can see, at any heart rate:
- NSR and ectopic rhythms; tachy- and bradycardia; PAC, PVC; couplet of PAC and PVC; bigeminy and trigeminy (PAC and PVC); SVT, VTach; AF (atrial fibrillation) and AFl (atrial flutter), QRS delay and heart rate variability.
I gather that the Apple Watch can now measure AF at up to 150bpm.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. I do think the Wellue offer the best value and versatility. I have read that a US doctor has found that the AI has in his experience misreported the "safe" aberrant SVT as the much more worrying "VT" but have also read that a trained doctor would struggle with this ununsual rhythm that the Wellue AI is better to err on the side of caution.
Thanks for such a detailed explanation about the Wellue, I will look in to that and see what the options are here in the UK. I am now able to do ECG's on the Kardia 6 and the Fit bit which is feeling like a good start. I am concerned my Fitbit Sense 2 will only pick up AF notifications when bpm are between 50-120, I had a quick look at Apple and it seems it depends on (at least partially) which version of the App one has, EKG app Version 1 is up to 120bpm and version 2 is up to 150, it says to look on your iphone to check which version I have but on my phone it doesnt say , possibly because its a Iphone 11 and maybe too old, if I can get notifications with Apple at up to 150 bpm then its likely time to buy watch No 2 already , I could have one on each wrist to be even more obsessional
You’ll be fine. The iPhone 11 is still a completely up to date phone that does all that an iPhone 15 does really (the main difference is the speed and the camera). The reason is that it still easily runs the latest iOS software. Apple phones are really good in that way.
I wouldn’t worry about those heart rate limitations as I feel pretty sure that the Fitbit (and any other ECG device) would still pick up the AF. This is because the ventricular rate (i.e. the pulse) is so variable when AF is happening in the atria even when it seems to be at, say, 160bpm.
Thanks Stevethats extremely helpful, I will keep out of the Apple shop for now, very impressed with the Kardia6, Ive done a few ECG's now and so far all normal👍
For information the FDA is the Food and Drugs Administration in the USA. In the UK we have the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, known as NICE.
I think NICE have also approved the Kardia, but I'd be happy with either, myself, wouldn't you? The major market for these items tends to be the USA so it tends to be FDA approval that a company would seek first, I suspect. Actually, in the case of a home ECG device, which is only ever used to give an indication of what is happening, rather than a specific diagnosis, it's more the analysis that matters, so, on that score, both Kardia and Wellue seem to have "approval", Kardia for both the device and its algorithms; Wellue for their algorithms alone ("AI").
NICE is the National Institute for Health and Care Excellene, a UK body. Kardia was developed by an American company, Alive Cor. This discussion board originated in the UK, and I'm sure we all welcome AF sufferers from around the world. I was merely pointing out what the FDA is, for those users of the discussion board who didn't know.
I wouldn't be surprised, thanks to the (to my mind...) overly US-centric UK news and media, to find that more British people know what the FDA is than know of NICE, Thomas.
hi I have a Fitbit 5 I find this excellent for recording heart beat alerting you know if you are in A F mine always says I am in A F mine is controlled with medication and doctor says it's permanent apart from 3 days last week Fitbit said I was in normal rythm never said this before but will discuss this at hospital tomorrow I find it gives me peace of mind when exercising as I can keep an eye on my heart rate I wouldn't be without mine hope that helps
I set up my Fitbit sense 2 today and noticed it says it will only alert to AF if beats are under 120, I am not sure how useful that is because on occasions my heart has been 150-160 so presumably if that was AF it would not report?
It’s the same technology as the Apple Watch uses I presume, if so the alerts look for irregular heart beat as opposed to definite AF as they are using the optical sensors which are a good indication but not as accurate as the electrical sensors when doing an ECG. I haven’t read that alerts don’t work above 120bpm but when you do an ECG and your rate is above 120 then the algorithm in the software won’t determine the result as AF as the rate is above what the software can accurately determine. I wonder if that is the same for Fitbit.
I know for some this is not the case, but I am aware of when I drop out of SR. I use the apple watch to look for clues that its coming or look for clues as to when it occurred.
Most of my AF has started overnight - I can look at the HR history on my watch and see exactly when my HR start to act up. Last event around 4am my HR went to 85 and bounced around until I woke up and I knew I was in AF, so checked my watch EKG and it confirmed I was AF and my HR was starting to go to 95 and then 125.
Why is this important to me? Means I should take my PIP immediately rather than waiting 30 min or an hour to see if I stay in AF. Last event I took my PIP and 45 minutes later back into NSR.
I can also look at my Heart Rate Variability. In AF my Variability always jump to over 100-200.
My watch also helps me if I am feeling off, i.e. anxiety or whatever worrying that I might be in AF. I could look at my HR and look at the variability and know that I am not in AF or heading to AF.
I am happy with my watch. I wear it overnight to evaluate my sleep (watching for any Apnea) and it just tells me if I slept well (sometimes I don't feel like I got a great night sleep but it tells me I did, so it has to be right!)
I got a Fitbit Sense 2, it was a waste of $. It worked as expected for 6 months. Then, the alert for abnormal rhythms stopped functioning. And, it started to light up every time I moved in bed. Then, the light started to come on and stay on all night! Battery life went way down plus who can sleep with this light on. The arrythymia notification function did seem to come back. The EKG does work, and step counting. But I stopped using it because of the light coming on and no way to turn it off at night.
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