Home ECG monitor (electrocardiogram or EKG) offers many benefits beyond its bigger brother, the traditional 12-lead ECG machine. The personal ECG monitor are simple-to-use, convenient, and inexpensive. The monitoring can occur any time anywhere (home, office, car...) and measurements are available and recorded within minutes. The portable EKG machine is light and compact. Using it is simpler than taking one's blood pressure.
Cardiac events can occur randomly and not during the doctor's office. By doing home ECG monitoring, the condition can be captured and saved for later analysis by a doctor. The best time to take a reading is when you are not feeling well and experienced some warning signs of heart attack.
When a patient is not feeling well, the patient and family can immediately take a reading using an ECG monitoring device, assess the situation and take appropriate actions. With the information, the patient may be persuade to seek medical help immediately, instead of waiting for a few more hours to see if he gets better. Immediate help is critical during a heart attack.
To use a home EKG monitor, one should some basic understanding of what EKG is and know what the "normal EKG" looks like to the patient. A reading that is deviated from the patient's normal ECG would require further investigation.
EKG is also a standard tool in doing a complete sleep apnea study. It is one of the many measurement taken inside a sleep study lab. A research study has demonstrated that 93+% of the obstructive sleep apnea cases under study were diagnosed correctly using the EKG data alone.
False heart attack alarm can be stressful and cause a real one. Simply take a measurement using a personal EKG machine can really help to ease the concern. One author published an article on how to build a home-made EKG monitor and his motivation was due to his wife's false heart attacks.
Proper interpretation of EKG would require extensive training. However a patient should be able to tell if he is feeling well and if there is any changes to his normal waveform. The patient should be familiar with his normal ECG waveform by taking a few measurements when he feels fine.
A home ECG monitor is an alternative to a Holter monitor. A Holter monitor is a machine for recording the heart's rhythms. The monitor has multiple leads and is usually worn for 24 - 48 hours during normal activity. It can detect cardiac episodes that occur daily. For tracking infrequent cardiac events, a Holter monitor is not sufficient. Furthermore, wearing the machine is not comfortable.
A patient can use the home ECG monitor to monitor the effects of changes in medicine and his progress.
Portable ECG monitor is well suitable for nursing homes and home care providers to monitor their patients' conditions and progress. Since inexpensive and quality portable ECG monitors are available and little training is required to take measurements, the service can be made commonly available to patients. With some training, personnel in healthcare centers can learn identifying abnormal readings and in case of emergency, the data can be relayed to a doctor or hospital immediately.
[endif]
0 comments:
Post a Comment