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Syncope

Causes
Clinical features
Investigations
Therapy
Prognosis
Investigations

If there is no clear cause, consider event recorders a

Why?

  • Event recorders produce more interpretable ECG tracings with symptoms and detect more clinically important arrhythmias than 48 hours of Holter monitoring. a
  • Event monitoring is cheaper. a

Event recorders detect more clinically important arrhythmias than Holter monitoring

Patient Treatment Comparison Outcome CER RRR
(95% CI)
NNT
(95% CI)
palpitations a event recorder for up to 3 months or until 2 events detected Holter monitoring for 48 hours interpretable ECG tracing
at 3 months
35% 93%
(36% to 100%)
3
(2 to 8)
      clinically important arrhythmia detected 0%
5
(3 to 14)
 

Expiry date: June 2004
Levels of Evidence used in grading these guides

Author   CM   Ball
Reviewer   W N   Kapoor
CAT Writers   CM   Ball , B   Phillips , CJ   Wotton