Ambulatory Electrocardiography （Holter）

Author：Dr.Liu Haixia

Ambulatory electrocardiography (ECG) also called Holter monitor, is continuous ECG produced by a recorder carried by patient for 24 hours, 48 hours or even longer time. Ambulatory ECG can continuously record the cardiac electrical activity in the condition of patients’ daily activities. Ambulatory ECG can effectively determine whether the patients' symptoms such as dizziness, palpitation, palpitation, chest pain, chest tightness and fainting are related with arrhythmia or myocardial ischemia, thus can provide valuable data for clinical diagnosis and treatment.  

Ambulatory ECG is helpful in the diagnoses of transient arrhythmias, arrhythmias and ischemic attacks. Ambulatory ECG reflects the ECG changes in daily activity, which can make up for the shortage of resting ECG.

2、Qualitative and quantitative analysis of arrhythmia 

Arrhythmia can be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively in ambulatory ECG and made out the type, frequency and potential risk.  In particular, the type and frequency of some fatal arrhythmias, as well as the relationship between their occurrence with activity, sleep, etc, can be screened out from the high-risk group for further evaluation and treatment.  Generally, the mortality of ventricular premature beats less than 1 time/ hour was only about 5% within 2 years, while the mortality of ventricular premature beats over 10 times/hour was above 20% within 2 years.  Pairs of premature ventricular beats and short bursts of ventricular tachycardia have higher mortality.