Recording that elusive rhythm.
Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: Technology: Implantable loop recorder Use: The implantable loop recorder is a cardiac monitor that is implanted in patients with recurrent unexplained syncope to provide up to 14 months of cardiac monitoring. 1 This allows the clinician to obtain a symptom–rhythm correlation during infrequent spontaneous symptoms such as syncope or presyncope. History: Conventional monitoring techniques in patients with syncope include inpatient telemetry and Holter monitoring. These techniques are limited by relatively brief monitoring periods, however, and it is unlikely that the rhythm profiles will provide sufficient diagnostic information for patients with infrequent symptoms. Advances in pacemaker technology in the mid-1980s that enabled us to record the rate of the detected rhythm eventually led to the innovative concept that some patients might benefit from prolonged cardiac rhythm monitoring. George Klein pioneered the use of the implanted syncope monitor in patients in which an arrhythmia was suspected but could not be documented because episodes were too infrequent. After promising results were obtained in 16 such patients 2 engineers from Medtronic (Mississauga, Ont.) worked with Klein to develop a prototype device. A pilot study was undertaken involving 24 patients with unexplained syncope, and a diagnosis was obtained in 21 (88%) of those patients within 2 years of the implantation of the recorder; 3
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Authors: A D Krahn, G J Klein, R Yee, A C Skanes
Institution: Western University
Language: English
Subfield: Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2156769780