ELR

ELR

An ELR is a device that records a patient s heart rate for up to seven days at a stretch and gives an accurate measure of the function and problems of the heart that go unnoticed in other tests.

An ECG monitors the heart for a few minutes or seconds. It can detect arrhythmias that occur in those few seconds. But there are patients with infrequent short-duration transient symptoms, recurring over days, and these are unlikely to be diagnosed by the conventional ECG or even a Holter monitoring that monitors the heart for 24-48 hours. An echo test on the other hand, does not record the patient s ECG, but rather detects blockages or physical abnormalities in the patient s heart. An echo test cannot be used to diagnose cardiac arrhythmia.

An ELR has the capability to monitor a patient for a long duration, for up to 7 days, and hence, has a higher chance of providing a diagnosis to patients whose symptoms occur infrequently.

How does the ELR work?

The ELR system consists of two parts – a patch called PiiX and a cellular transmitter called zLink. The patch is like a large band-aid that is simply put on the chest of the patient and the transmitter or zLink, the size of a mobile phone can either be worn by the patient on a belt or placed within nine meters of the patient to enable transmission. The patch records arrhythmia episodes and wirelessly transmits them to the transmitter, which relays the recordings to an ECG monitoring centre through a sim card enabled cellular network. The system monitors the heartbeat function of the patient 24 hours for the prescribed time. At the end of the prescribed period, the monitoring centre sends the diagnostic reports to the physician for final diagnosis.