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Showing posts from December, 2020

How can I tell if I have Atrial Fibrillation or an Arrhythmia?

Patients come to me all the time and they have palpitations. They feel their heart beating. Most of these people actually it’s their own rate going fast at times. And it’s what I call the princess and the pea syndrome. Some people feel everything and you can put as many mattresses as you want on top of that pea and they still feel it. And that’s very unfortunate. Whereas other people can be in almost life-threatening rhythms and they don’t feel anything. So the sensation of an arrhythmia is very difficult to pinpoint even for a doctor. You need proof. So if you’re having a feeling of palpitations, it’s a very simple way to figure it out. We just give you a monitor to wear for a given period of time and we correlate your symptoms with the electrocardiographic representation. We can even use phone apps now to do it, and if your symptoms turn out to be atrial fibrillation then we have to go down that path. This is not to be disparaging to any doctor who listens for 15 seconds on a patient