An Introduction to Heart Arrhythmia

For more than 20 years, Cardiac Monitoring Services has aided the diagnosis of a number of heart conditions by providing monitoring equipment and results analysis services. Cardiac Monitoring Services offers the Holter heart monitor, a device that records all cardiac activity for up to seven days. The data collected from these recordings can be used to generate a signal-averaged electrocardiogram, a form of diagnostic imaging used to detect arrhythmia.

An arrhythmia occurs when the heart beats with an abnormal rhythm. Heartbeat irregularities can prevent the heart from pumping blood correctly throughout the body, potentially causing damage to other organs. As there are many ways in which a person’s heart may beat irregularly, an arrhythmia can occur in many forms.

When an arrhythmia causes the heart to beat too slowly, the condition is called bradycardia. Bradycardia is typically marked by a heart rate lower than 60 beats per minute (BPM); however, the BPM threshold for a problematic heart rate varies, depending on a patient’s age and physical fitness. The same is true for tachycardia, which occurs when a patient’s heart beats too fast, typically with a BPM higher than 100. Atrial fibrillation is a type of arrhythmia that presents as an irregular or “quivering” heartbeat. Some patients describe this condition as feeling like the heart is skipping beats or banging against the chest cavity, while others do not experience any symptoms at all.

The Event Monitor – Cardiac Monitoring Services

Offering its heart monitoring devices to medical facilities and physicians in the Irvine, California, area free of charge, Cardiac Monitoring Services works to provide medical professionals and patients with state-of-the-art clinical technology. Pioneered by Cardiac Monitor Services,  both devices are comfortable, non-invasive monitors that can be worn for more than 24 hours.

The Event monitor, for example, can be worn for more than 30 days. Unlike the company’s other monitor, the Event monitor records heart information only when symptoms occur. Ideal for patients who do not experience symptoms like dizziness, palpitations, chest pain, or other symptoms every day, the Event monitor is attached directly to the patient’s chest and activated when he or she presses a button. After the recommended period, the data from the monitor is securely transferred to the company, where a report is compiled and sent back to the physician or medical facility within 24 hours and can be sent STAT upon request.

PACs and PVCs Can Be Diagnosed with a Portable Monitor

Cardiac Monitoring Services provides physicians and patients with innovative heart-monitoring devices. The portable heart monitors featured by Cardiac Monitoring Services arm doctors with accurate, continuous data that enable them to provide the best treatment to patients with irregular heartbeats and other cardiac conditions. One of the conditions sometimes monitored in this way is the arrhythmia known as premature beats.

Usually, premature beats are generally innocuous and therefore do not produce symptoms. However, when symptoms do appear, they do so in the form of a skipped beat or a kind of fluttering. In healthy people, this common arrhythmia typically does not need to be treated.

If the beats take place in the upper chambers of the heart, or the atria, then they are classified as PACs, short for premature atrial contractions. If the beats take place in the lower chambers of the heart, or the ventricles, they are referred to as PVCs, or premature ventricular contractions.

While PACs and PVCs typically occur naturally, they can be precipitated by heart disease too. When they result from disease, a heart monitor is used to diagnose and assess the irregular heartbeat. Too much stress or exercise or the consumption of too much caffeine are often responsible for premature beats as well.

Congenital Heart Conditions

Cardiac Monitoring Services is a healthcare and medical technology company that specializes in the production of state-of-the-art heart monitoring devices to be used by medical professionals. The technologies developed by Cardiac Monitoring Services including a 30-day event monitor and the Holter device, both of which are useful to doctors in making accurate diagnoses of heart conditions.

Last fall, the American Heart Association released a list of the most common heart defects affecting Americans today. Unlike heart disease, congenital heart defects involve structural issues within the cardiovascular system that generally evolve from an unusual formation of major blood vessels around the heart. Advances in cardiovascular technologies, such as heart monitors, have made it possible to monitor and even cure defects that were once thought to be permanent and sometimes fatal. The American Heart Association broke down its list of common congenital heart defects into 15 categories, including aortic valve stenosis (AVS), complete atrioventricular canal defect (CACD), Ebstein’s Anomaly, and single ventricle defects.