My AF is what I call quite violent where I know the second it fires off. Someone said it feels like a bag of frogs leaping about in your chest which is how I would describe my symptoms. My question is, should I rely on a machine such as a BP monitor or other device to give me an accurate pulse reading during all the chaos or would it be more accurate to take my own pulse at the wrist and count the irregular bumps for one minute ignoring what is going on in my chest? To me it would seem more logical for the latter rather than rely on an unknown algorithm which is programmed into some device.
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Based on my experience I would use a BP monitor whiçh has been approved by NICE in the context of AF, Omron and Microlife have products which come to mind.
Neither, as both miss the weak in between beats which are a feature of the great ‘boxoffrogs experience’. The best device to get an accurate count is a Kardia or other which counts electric signals. But the best test is how you feel - chest pain, faintness, breathlessness, nausea and sweating, any of those call for medical help.
I always sweat a lot towards the end of an afib episode. I have assumed it was just a result of the heart beating faster than usual - like when you exercise.
My AF rate is 170+ First time it happened and I didn’t know what it was I tried the BP monitor and just got error message it was too fast for it and too fast to count manually . I use a Kardia
My afib is usually more a box of butterflies than frogs 😄. Sometimes I don’t get the fluttering, just a feeling of dejection, and sometimes I am not even aware of my afib. I have, when all seems peaceful, taken my pulse and found it wonderfully even, only to find, when checking with my Kardia immediately afterwards, that I am actually in Afib ! So taking my own pulse doesn’t give me an accurate answer.
I was told to get a Kardia and the app for it by an EP I saw, which involved getting a smart phone which I hadn’t had previously! After I’d sent him a reading of my heart having an episode, he sent a prescription for Flecainide to my surgery for me to take as a PIP as and when I had an episode. Now that I take it regularly it has virtually put an end to episodes and the Kardia is just used to check friends’ heart rates occasionally. As it’s very small it is easy to have with you all the time to use when/if necessary to track your heart’s progress during and episode or just to confirm it is doing fine!!
I have an EMay portable ECG monitor. It is cheaper than a Kardia, but works just as well.It’s a bit smaller than a mobile phone. You can put the ECG readings from the EMay, onto your phone. When I had my post ablation follow-up appointment, I showed the ECG’s to the Doctor, as I’d been getting palpitations and he looked at them and said they were nothing to worry about and that these gadgets were very good to have. I also have a BP monitor I got from Boots, which works well. Also when Covid first started, they recommended you got a fingertip oximeter, which measures how much oxygen is in your blood.If it drops below 90%, it would be a reason to call a Doctor or 111. It’s useful to have an ECG monitor you can show ECG readings to your Doctor.
As other people have said, you need something that measures the electrical signals when you are in AF - a personal ECG such Kardia is perfect. I would guess there is unlikely to be any device which can accurately measure a physical/optical 'pulse' as the heart is not beating correctly and when in AF not every beat is of good enough 'quality' to generate a pulse.
Sitting for hours/days in EDs with my wife in AF and hooked up to ECG monitors AND pulse oximiters I watched how the electrical Heart Rate would be constantly high (often settling around 150-160) yet the pulse reading would fluctuate randomly from say 70 to 150. Sometimes it would be in sync with HR for a few seconds, then it would be wildly out. We see the same with her Omron BP monitors - their 'pulse' is a meaningless value.
After many visits to EDs and waiting in waiting rooms for up to 15 hours (the NHS is shocking in the UK these days) we later discovered that delay is because the triage nurses relied on their (low) finger pulse reading to pass on the info to the docs and basically ignored us saying we'd done a Kardia at home and got a very high reading. It seems that is standard training to take what the patient says with a pinch of salt and only trust the devices they have. We didn't get believed for years that she had AF until we bought a Kardia and then we saw on her records they wrote "proven AF" after the first visit to ED when they caught it on their ECG. It was only when we mentioned these delays to one of the (shocked) ED doctors that they agreed nurses should know not to rely on a 'pulse' reading when someone is in AF. On future visits we always did the Kardia in front of the triage nurse and on one occasion watched their mouth open wide when they saw 220bpm (and then rushed my wife straight into resus - not that any of their treatments helped ☹️)
Your bag of frogs to my squirrels running around in my chest! I use a Kardia device linked to my phone. It works very well in pinpointing an accurate beat count.
l have a Boots blood pressure monitor and it works very well when l am in AF. A symbol shows heart arrhythmia, although l always know, but blood pressure and pulse are correct. I once had the opportunity of checking it with a doctor’s device and numbers were the same.
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