Holters or 12- lead ECG machines online marketplace

Reviews

by Lavender - 2024-08-22 22:50:21

Contec has some very poor reviews online. 
I have no personal experience.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.contecmed.com

Here is one:

May 2, 2024

They should rename this company "Conjob Medical Systems". They sell total off-shore garbage and don't honor the one year warranty on their pet blood pressure monitor. Not even close. After having this piece of @$?%& for only 2 months, it kept timing out and was virtually useless. Ebay was no help at all either, when it comes to helping resolve this dispute. Gotta love getting ripped-off !!

Here's another site with reviews:

https://reviewmeta.com/brand/contec

No experience with Contec but with Kardia Mobile

by Gemita - 2024-08-23 04:05:52

Rch, I have no personal experience either with Contec.  However I do have personal experience using Kardia Mobile.  In fact Kardia is used over here in the UK in many GP surgeries to screen for Atrial Fibrillation.  Kardia certainly appears to be a reliable, trusted, portable monitor.

My six lead Kardia mobile works extremely well in identifying my atrial and ventricular arrhythmias although the manufacturers clearly have not tested Kardia for use with a pacemaker, therefore they cannot recommend it for use with a pacemaker.  However, Kardia clearly works with a pacemaker.  I believe the single lead Kardia works well too.  Print outs from Kardia can be handed to our doctors for accurate interpretation if we cannot read our own ECGs.

I have changed the setting on my Kardia to record an ECG for 60 secs rather than the default 30 secs setting.  This provides more info.  I rarely get “Unreadable or Unclassified due to noise or other disturbances from any source, including from my pacemaker.   With my 6 lead Kardia monitor, I can get the following Advanced Determinations:

Normal Sinus Rhythm

Sinus Rhythm with supraventricular ectopy

Sinus Rhythm with Premature Ventricular Contractions

Bradycardia

Tachycardia

Atrial Fibrillation (Atrial Flutter can also be identified)

Sinus Rhythm with Wide QRS

Unclassified/Unreadable

I was told we will never see pacing spikes unless our pacemaker is set to pace in Unipolar mode?  Most of them are set to pace us in Bipolar mode.  Even with hospital grade ECGs, if the machine is not set to a “pacemaker mode" it will not show the pacemaker spikes.  Not sure if this is correct?  Atrial pacing via Kardia I believe shows flat P waves.  Certainly a learning process for us all.

Sorry I cannot help with Contec.  Why are you looking for additional monitoring Rch?

Holters, 12 lead EKGs, and Kardias

by Selwyn - 2024-08-23 11:55:53

Hi RCH, I see from your bio you have used a Kardia. May I say that the 6 lead version is superior to the single lead version IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT.  Otherwise, the single lead Kardia is good for detecting atrial fibrillation. It is not reliable, talking about its programme,  for anything else other than rate. You can see heart block etc. Neither maching detects pacemaker spikes. 

A Holter monitor is good if you are asleep and have arrhythmias. You have to know what you are looking for and be able to interpret EKGs (ECGs in UK English). You could end up with a lot of tape to look at!

I have used a 12 lead ECG professionally for 30+ years. The modern machines offer an interpretive programme to suggest a 'diagnosis'. A lot of the suggestions are quite far fetched and would cause anxiety if you cannot interpret  EKGs. ( eg. I was told I had pericarditis and an inferior MI - neither of which I had). You have to know how to wire them up and there is a cost to the electrodes.

It takes a fair amount of training to understand EKGs. Not impossible, though after 30 years I still have a bit to learn. 

Can't say I am a fan of Chinese electronics.  Like Gemita, I have to wonder what you are looking for ?  You can hardly walk around with a 12 lead EKG machine. How confident would you be looking at hours of EKG from a Holter tape? 

Best wishes.

Safety

by crustyg - 2024-08-23 12:28:26

Any electrical machine that you connect to your body will have a leakage current from its power supply, from machine into you.  The standards for how *low* this leakage current must be are extremely tight: I would be very reluctant to take some unknown vendor's claim that their device is correctly certified to meet all relevant standards in this area.  Even battery powered machines can produce electrical burns through the electrodes and mains powered units could kill you.

Holter or 12 lead ECG machines

by Rch - 2024-08-24 02:34:29

Thank you for all your input and advice. I really appreciate all your comments. I’m ApVs at rest (LRL 55, Ap <55% Vp<1%), and above LRL , I’m AsVs (Indication for PM: Mobitz type II 2:1 block at HR over 120). I’m not pacemaker dependent. I do use Kardia 6, and occasionally even adapt it to get precordial equivalents but never to diagnose an anterior or high lateral wall ischemia or pericarditis. While I’m not an expert, I can read basic resting surface ECGs, Kardia 6 and rhythm strips in a non-paced heart but find it challenging to read abnormal paced ECGs esp on Kardia 6. 

Long term monitoring?

by Gemita - 2024-08-24 06:39:13

Rch, thank you for your response to our comments.  Some observations. 

Your AV block on paper seems under excellent control with only 1% Ventricular pacing needed with the settings you currently have set up. There is certainly no indication that your block has progressed from those numbers, but something is clearly still not working for you?  

Is it a settings problem with settings set too sensitively to prevent you from pacing in the RV when you might actually need more pacing support or are your symptoms being exclusively caused by a heart rate/rhythm disturbance either from your Settings (like upper rate bahaviour/Mode Switch) or from your own heart misbehaving?  

I do understand the need to look for answers.  Long term monitoring will definitely help, together with keeping a diary of times, dates when your most difficult symptoms occur, so that these can be linked to either your own heart rhythm/rate or due to a pacing induced cause.  Pacing induced arrhythmias do occur and can sometimes be difficult to identify without persistent, long term monitoring or frequent device follow up.  We have certainly heard from members over the years with pacemaker induced rhythm disturbances, some of which have been exceedingly difficult to capture.  To make matters worse, some rhythm disturbances remain under-recognised because there are no specific device algorithms to detect or to store them.

Most of the time, problems occur when the pacemaker is working correctly but needs to be reprogrammed or adjusted.  You mention the ATR (atrial tachycardia response) and other settings in your Boston Scientific pacemaker and that you can get some of that information on the intra cardiac electrograms after interrogation but that that information is only available if an event is recorded (meets the criterion set up for its storage/recording). I understand this problem all too well Rch with my Medtronic pacemaker and just how much is not recorded!

From your comments, it seems you are getting atrial arrhythmias which are causing symptoms and triggering sudden settings changes.  Frequent Mode Switch due to sudden high atrial rates certainly causes symptoms for me too.  I think you know where the problem lies Rch, so the fix should be targeted to these areas and to getting your disturbances under better control?

I would perhaps push for longer term monitoring, even to ask about an implant monitor like the Reveal Linq that could exclusively look for disturbances in rhythm and rate and store/record so much more than your  pacemaker if you are as symptomatic as I believe you are?  I can recall, surprisingly, my doctor telling me when I had my pacemaker implanted for Sick Sinus Syndrome that I should also keep my implanted Reveal Linq monitor in place for its entire battery life (3+ years) since it would give him far more information to help him to treat my arrhythmias.  I was rather surprised, confused and somewhat disappointed to hear this.  I had hoped that my pacemaker would capture/store all my rhythm disturbances but this is clearly not the case.  Pacemaker storage space is limited and only those disturbances that reach the criteria set up by our doctors for their storage, will be reported on, leaving perhaps some important rhythm disturbances un-identified and still causing symptoms.  A frustrating situation, I well know.

Relative increase in Vp

by Rch - 2024-08-25 03:11:46

Thanks Gemita for your suggestions and advice. Yes, I agree with you that I am doing quite well with a Vp < 1%. My main concerns recently however have been some random increases in ventricular pacing even on moderate exercises. That’s new to me. The episodes would last for about 15-20 mins with rates between 60-110 or so. No events were recorded on interrogation. I usually work with my device tech directly as the Cardiologists and EPs are too busy with caths and ablations although they are available on phone call. Now I think I have some idea what has changed recently. After reviewing my electrograms associated with previous ATR and PMT events in the past, and comparing them with my current events recorded on Kardia 6 , I find the present events are not ATR events (trigger 160) nor PMTs ( MTR 130) but are simply ventricular pacing of garden variety Mobitz type 2  AVblocks that occur with heart rates over 100 for me. I’m on DDD mode, so I presume all my p waves above LRL are sensed, and the Ventricles paced (wide complex on Kardia). When the Ventricular rates ( Vp) reach the MTR, I do see a gradual drop in the rates which is perhaps a Wenckebach behavior! Since the atrial rates don’t shoot high enough to hit the ATR trigger rate, an event is not declared! That’s just my theory and I’m sure there are several unknowns which I’ll find out in the due course. But for now, I’m good and will live with my theory. I could try to increase my beta blockers to minimize the episodes but will discuss that with my Cardiologist.