Search

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia in adults. AF increases the risk of heart failure, cardiac ischemic disease, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Either clinical and subclinical AF increase the risk of stroke and worsen the patients' clinical outcome. The early diagnosis of AF episodes, even if asymptomatic or clinically silent, is of pivotal importance to ensure prompt and adequate thromboembolic risk prevention therapies. The development of technology is allowing new systematic mass screening possibilities, especially in patients with higher stroke risk. The mobile health devices available for AF detection are: smartphones, wristworn, earlobe sensors and handheld ECG. These devices showed a high accuracy in AF detection especially when a combined approach with single-Lead ECG and photoplethysmography algorithms is used. The use of wearable devices for AF screening is a feasible method but more head-to-head comparisons between mHealth and medical devices are needed to establish their comparative effectiveness across different study populations.

Implantable loop recorders (ILRs) are effective tools for detecting arrhythmias by long-term continuous heart rhythm monitoring. Benefits have been demonstrated even in pediatric patients. ILR with a long sensing vector has recently been designed to improve signal quality in terms of P wave visibility and R wave amplitude. However, there are no data on its use in pediatric patients. We considered a series of pediatric patients implanted with a long sensing vector ILR. Sensing performance, including R wave amplitude and P wave visibility, device-related complications, and diagnostic yield were collected. During follow-up, each patient guided by his/her parents/guardians was also asked to complete a brief questionnaire to assess patient acceptability of the device. Twenty-five consecutive pediatric patients (mean age 11.3 ± 3.5years, 72% male) were enrolled. The insertion success rate was 100% on the first attempt with no complications. The median amplitude of the R wave was 1.15mV (interquartile range, 1.01-1.42) with no significant differences between patients aged ≤ or > 10years (p = 0.726) and between female and male (p = 0.483). P wave was classified as 'always visible' in 24/25 patients (96%). ILR was generally well accepted and tolerated by all involved patients. During a median follow-up of 297days (117-317), we achieved in 5 patients a correlation between symptoms and rhythm disorders (20%)and ruled out significant arrhythmias in 6 symptomatic children (24%). Long sensing vector ILR showed to be well accepted, with good signal quality and an excellent safety profile even in pediatric patients.

Background: The effects of lockdown on non-COVID patients are varied and unexpected. The aim is to evaluate the burden of cardiac arrhythmias during a lockdown period because of COVID-19 pandemics in a population implanted with cardiac defibrillators and followed by remote monitoring.Methods: In this retrospective, multicentre cohort study, we included 574 remotely monitored implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) and cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (CRT-D) recipients implanted before January 1, 2019, at seven hospitals in the Campania region, comparing the burden of arrhythmias occurred during the lockdown period because of COVID-19 epidemics (from March 9 to May 1, 2020) with the arrhythmias burden of the corresponding period in 2019 (reference period). Data collection was performed through remote monitoring.Results: During the lockdown period, we observed ventricular tachyarrhythmias (ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation) in 25 (4.8%) patients while in seasonal reference period we documented ventricular tachyarrhythmias in 12 (2.3%) patients; the comparison between the periods is statistically significant (P