Does 28-day Holter monitoring improve detection of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in patients with cryptogenic stroke?
28-day Holter monitoring is poorly tolerated and insufficiently sensitive for detecting paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in cryptogenic stroke patients.
This pilot study in a prospective cohort of 20 cryptogenic stroke patients showed that a significant proportion has paroxysmal atrial fibrillation undetected by 24-h Holter monitoring. However, longer monitoring with 28-day Holter was poorly tolerated and still insufficiently sensitive for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation detection. Further studies are urgently needed to elucidate the optimal timing, method and duration of cardiac rhythm monitoring following ischaemic stroke.
Tu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.