Wrist heart monitor?

[Goodheartgirl]

Hello All.

I'm contacting you all out of desperation. My adult child has had severe epilepsy most of her life. As you may know people experiencing tonic clonic or major seizures can have their breathing arrested for a few seconds whereby their lips turn blue then ends up gasping for breath. This is very distressing for carers and onlookers as you can imagine. These major seizures affect the heart causing it to race. When my child has a few of these a day she has at times ended up in a coronary ward attached to an eeg machine. Recently with her specialist epilepsy nurse I've been trying to find a portable wrist alarm which warns the carer that she is having a seizure. This is so I can reach her and make sure she is safe as she's had countless awful injuries when out of my sight. There are portable epilepsy wrist monitors around but rely on bluetooth and wifi which isn't reliable where we live. They also need to be recharged after a few hours. This got me to wondering if there is a wrist monitor which would emit an alarm when the wearer's heartbeat becomes erratic or races. This would signal to me that she's having a seizure. I've looked online but can't quite find the right device. Something even like a sports watch that has an alarm when the heart rate is too high should do the job. If anyone knows of such a device or something similar I'd be so grateful to hear from you.

Kindest wishes to you all.

[Bazza1234]

There are a number of sports watches which will give you this facility - you would probably want one which has a wrist based heart rate monitor. However these are known to be a bit inaccurate at times in regards to actual HR numbers and lag in response to real time high effort athletic pursuits. I would say that you could give it a try - just beware that sometimes they could give a "false positive", in other words register a high heart rate when there is in fact no high heart rate. I have Garmin watch with a chest belt type heart rate monitor which are more accurate than the wrist based ones ( but even these can give false readings at times as they depend on a good electrical conductivity at all times between the skin and the belt electrodes) - I use this for running training and set it to sound an alarm if my HR rises too high while running ( a sign for me to rest/slow down) One thing I didn't mention above is that the wrist based monitors are not exactly heart rate monitors, they are actually pulse rate monitors.

[Goodheartgirl in reply to Bazza1234]

Thanks Bazza 1234. We are willing to give anything a try. I'm just trying to collect as much info as possible. The chest strap may be a bit impractical but I wouldn't mind the odd false positive reading if the positive readings are shown too. Either heart rate or pulse monitoring would be helpful. You'd think there would be something on the market even for people worried about irregular heartbeats for example. Can you tell me if the sound from the alarm facility on the watch you mention is fairly loud? Could it be heard from another room?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

[Bazza1234 in reply to Goodheartgirl]

I have Garmin Forerunner 220 ( now an outdated model a few years old) - it is quite loud and possibly could be heard in another close room - you would have to try one out somehow. See if you can get a demo at a sports store.

[Bazza1234 in reply to Bazza1234]

BTW - this is purely a sportswatch and only counts heartbeats in beats per minute - nothing like a medical monitor which picks up irregularities , etc.

[gal4God]

1st of all help ur adult child to understand ways going on and be there 4 them. Ive never used a sports watch but believe they are good but that isn’t ur choice but ur child’s as they are an adult and are probably just as worried as u but may not want to talk about their health care issues.