The Use of Ambulatory Electrocardiography in the Emergency Medicine Ward to Assess Patients with Symptoms Possibly Related to Cardiac Arrhythmia: A Sharing of Experience in a Local Hospital

Ambulatory electrocardiography (AECG) or Holter has a long history of use in patients with suspected symptomatic arrhythmia. In Hong Kong, patients with AECG monitoring were entirely under the care of internal medicine in the past. This report described a pioneer trial on the use of AECG in a local emergency setting under the supervision of emergency physicians. A departmental guideline for AECG use on suitable patients was drawn up and patients underwent AECG monitoring in the emergency medicine ward. The AECG results were reported preliminarily by emergency physicians and then confirmed with additional comments by cardiologists. This report presented the clinical features, AECG results and clinical outcomes of all patients recruited from the start of the protocol in May 2008 to July 2009.