Heart rate pulse wave form graphs

Does anyone have any thoughts on the heartbeat pulse wave graphs that are generated using your smartphone camera? When I take my pulse these graphs often look like the worst ekg you could ever imagine, I then check my pulse and it feels regular as far as I can tell. Something similar happened today while on my elliptical. My rate went from 110 to 50, it was 117 on the iphone. Of course I'm concerned of having an arrhythmia as I'm now 7 weeks post ablation. I have a alivecor ordered to add to the mix. Also, while taking your pulse manually is it always consistent in strength or do you feel a slight variation?

RonM

Ron,

I've used Stress Doctor on an iPhone. In this link are links to screen captures when I was in afib. The key being huge variability. <[www.afibbers.org]

My pulse is consistent in strength when I'm in NSR. To me NSR feels like NSR in my fingers. I have used the Stress Doctor to confirm my denial that I'm in afib when I wake at 3AM in afib (fortunately I've only had this happen once in 27 months). I'll have a discussion with myself whether I'm really in afib. I put my finger on the phone & see the huge variability and it is undeniable. Note visually there is variability in NSR and the pattern may look ugly, however the thing to look at is the values on the Y-Axis. If you have a 10 or 20 beat range, its NSR. If it is a huge range, it is afib, in my experience.

I can tell afib in "4 beats or less" with my fingers on a pulse point. My preferred one is the one just in front of and then above a horizontal line at the tragus on the ear. I'm not sure everyone has this pulse point.

George



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2015 11:31AM by GeorgeN.

How do you know your rate went from 110 to 50? Was that what the eplitical trainer said? I wouldn't trust an eliptical.

I have noticed variations in how strong my pulse feels in NSR.

-- The slower the HR, the stronger it feels
-- I think the higher the BP, the weaker it feels.

Also alot of PAC's may cause fluctuating HR readings, as it can confuse the measuring instrument.

As George noted Ron you do have to be careful to extract meaningful consistent info from using. These devices using the smartphone camera and often an unproven and not FDA approved algorithm. The Alivecor should help give a bit more consistency though it too can often misinterpret a number of PACs or PVCs as 'probable AFIB' just because of the variability in R to R spacing that such ectopic beats will show in a real EKG style graphic display.

And Anti AFIBs points are all good ones too. I don't think you had a LINQ installed right? Obviously you would have checked with Austin if you had. In any event, the Alivecor arrives pretty quick after ordering so you should have a better way to capture those kind of moments shortly.

Be well,
Shannon

Thanks everyone for your valued input! I really appreciate it and am glad I have all of you with me on my journey. I had a couple more inconsistencies on the iphone apps ( heart rate monitor, & stress doctor ), with rates up to 180. I am not giving them any weight at this point and have sent in a couple of medilynx strips to Dr. Natales office for review. I also, get my Alivecor this evening and will be using this to get a better gauge of whats truely going on.

Ron



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2015 11:42AM by RonM.

Anti-Fib and Shannon are correct, runs of PAC's can look like afib. While I get PAC's, I'm not prone to runs of them so consistent high variability is afib for me. Using an R to R Polar monitor or exporting the data from a Polar H7 strap captured on the HRV Logger app (through DropBox) to the Polar software, I can easily tell the difference between PAC's & afib in me. Lots of examples in CR 52 <[www.afibbers.org] and in <[www.afibbers.org]

Texas Arrythmia just called and said that my strips show NSR.

R

RonM Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Texas Arrythmia just called and said that my
> strips show NSR.
>
> R


There you go Ron ... good to hear and enjoy your weekend!
Shannon