Atrial fibrillation detected by external loop recording for seven days or two-day simultaneous Holter recording: A comparison in patients with ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac cause of ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (IS/TIA).

AIM: To compare the diagnostic value of seven-day external loop recording (ELR) and two-day Holter recording for detecting AF after IS/TIA.

METHODS: 191 IS/TIA patients without AF history. Endpoint was AF >30s. We started two-day Holter recording and seven-day ELR simultaneously.

RESULTS: Seven-day ELR and two-day Holter recording detected the same three AF patients. ELR detected another six patients with AF adjudicated by cardiologists, four detections after Holter (3 vs. 7, p=0.125) and two false-positive detections during Holter. Seven-day ELR automatically classified 50/191 patients (26%) with AF, but only 7/50 (14%) were confirmed as AF by cardiologists.

CONCLUSION: Seven-day ELR did not detect significantly more patients with AF than two-day Holter recording. 86% of patients with ELR-classified AF were false positives, indicating a poor performance of the automatic AF detection algorithm used.