Kent Heart Rhythm Blog

This is a difficult question to answer with any precision, because “arrhythmia” is not a precise diagnosis. Rather, the word is a collective term for a family of related conditions that alter the normal pattern of electrical activation of the heart during a heartbeat. Arrhythmias tend to cause disruption of the heart’s usual pattern of beating, either making it too fast (the tachycardias) or too slow (the bradycardias). Just to mix things up a little more, all patients respond slightly differently to arrhythmias, so that a condition that causes an extremely fast beat (tachycardia) for one individual may lead to a normal or even a slow heartbeat in another individual. The underlying mechanism of rhythm disturbance could be exactly the same but the treatment required could be opposite, with the tachycardic patient requiring drugs to slow their heart, while the bradycardic patient might need a pacemaker to speed their heart up. Some arrhythmias are serious - life threatening even. Others

Apple Watch series 4 and above includes an app that allows you to make a 30 second recording of your heartbeat’s electrical activity (also called an “electrocardiogram” or “ECG”). The app itself is called “ECG” and can link to the “Health” app on a paired iPhone. You can then use the iPhone display to review the data you have captured, and even use email to send the recording to someone else, for example your electrophysiologist. There is also a built-in algorithm within the app that Apple say can identify the most common heart rhythm abnormality - atrial fibrillation - automatically. Lots of my patients have an iPhone and an Apple Watch, and I am often asked whether we can use the data from their Apple Watch to diagnose or manage their heart rhythm problems. First off,  we should be clear that we are not talking about heart rate data. Separate from the ECG app, Apple Watch can continuously measure your heart rate and feed this into the Health app on your iPhone to give a continuous gr