AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY OF PATIENTS WITH PALPITATIONS AND EVALUATION OF HOLTER MONITORING IN THEM

INTRODUCTION: Palpitations is unusual awareness of one’s own heart beat. Holter monitoring is done to find etiology of palpitations. The aim of our study was to evaluate the holter findings in patients of palpitations in relation to abnormal significant, abnormal insignificant and normal cardiac rhythms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 24 hr holter monitoring data for patients with palpitations admitted to Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical college and General Hospital, Pune, Maharashtra, a teaching tertiary care hospital from January 2014 to March 2015 was analysed with respect to age, sex, cardiac rhythm abnormalities and presence of underlying cardiac or non cardiac condition. RESULTS: Holter monitoring data for 117 patients with palpitations was analysed.                                  54 (46.15%) patients were males, 63 (53.84%) patients were females.                                                48 (41%) patients were 41 yrs of age.                        Certain medical disorders pre-existed in these patients. 48.7% palpitations were attributed to cardiac cause (hypertension, valvular heart disease, MVP i.e. mitral valve proplapse and DCMP i.e. dilated cardiomyopathy); 27.4% to miscellaneous causes like COPD, thyroid disorders and 23.9% due to anxiety. 27.6% of holter studies were abnormal significant, 39.3% with abnormal insignificant findings and 33.3% were normal.      CONCLUSION: Almost 1/3 rd i.e. 33.3% of the patients with palpitations had no arrhythmias.                                 Though 76% of palpitations were due to some cardiac or non cardiac condition atleast 24% could only be explained by psychiatric conditions like anxiety.