Use of the Kardia Mobile may permit patients with palpitations to be evaluated in primary care.
The Kardia Mobile from AliveCor provides convenient patient driven electrocardiogram (ECG) recording over extended periods. That’s one of the key findings from a recently published clinical paper in the UK at Hammersmith Hospital.
The widespread uptake of smartphones makes the Kardia Mobile an appealing method for investigating intermittent palpitations in the absence of syncope.
In the researcher’s experience, the vast majority of patients were able to use the device at the time of symptoms, and a symptom-rhythm correlation was possible for all patients who submitted recordings.
In the cohort of patients with intermittent palpitations, use of the Kardia Mobile enabled the correlation of symptoms with heart rhythm in the bulk (76%) of individuals. This compares favourably to the reported diagnostic yield of 24-hour Holter recordings.
They demonstrated the utility of the Kardia Mobile in the diagnosis of intermittent palpitations in a low-risk population. Based on their findings they propose that many patients presenting with intermittent palpitations could be investigated in primary care as a first line investigation of palpitations.
The minority of patients diagnosed with an arrhythmia can then be triaged appropriately allowing cardiologists to target patients who need their expertise.
The Kardia Mobile is cost effective and helps reduce delays in the diagnosis of arrhythmia or gives reassurance where heart rhythm is normal and will improve the patient experience.
The paper Diagnostic utility of real-time smartphone ECG in the initial investigation of palpitations can be viewed here 10.5837/bjc.2018.006
