Talk:Holter monitor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Unassessed	rated as Unassessed-Class on the assessment scale
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

As was mentioned in the article, there is a large amount of data recorded in a 24-hour period, and only little bits of it are useful for diagnostic purposes. Some mention might be made in this article of another type of worn heart monitor, which I often hear referred to as an AER, for Ambulatory Event Recorder, which, though not a Holter monitor, is related. This type of monitor records to volatile memory in a loop, perhaps 60 to 120 seconds in length, and when the patient presses the "record" button, the monitor burns the loop's current contents, and perhaps 30 to 60 seconds of ECG following the button press, to non-volatile memory.

The types of AER that I work with, and all AERs that I know of, have battery life from 7 to 45 days, with 15 days being typical, and they can transmit an analog encoded ECG over the telephone to a properly equipped call center, where operators can then send decoded ECGs to the doctor(s) responsible for diagnosis. Companies that make devices of this type include Braemar, Inc., MedNet Health (also known as Universal Medical), TZ Medical, and others. I searched a bit, but didn't find a good canonical name for this type of device, so I thought I'd mention it here, rather than guessing a name and creating a new page. Hopefully someone can use this information.

This could probably be on its own page. Ambulatory event recorder is a fine name. JFW | T@lk 00:51, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

The Cleveland Clinic has a pretty good good overview of some of the different types here. --Arcadian 03:15, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Event monitor is the common way to refer to these monitors and to disginguish them from Holter monitors. Cardiac Event Monitor is probably the best heading for this type of monitor that is worn for a month or more. Also, there are two types of Event monitors. Looping which have the so called volatile memory mentioned above and Non-looping that only records after the monitor is applied and the record putton is pushed.