Now We Won't Miss a Beat!

Cardiologist Richard Woolley is proud to announce the imminent launch of 24 hour Holter monitor services from the Southern Animal Referral Centre. The Holter monitoring service will allow 24 hour monitoring of pets with episodic cardiac dysfunction, allowing intermittent cardiac arrhythmias to be logged and analysed without having to reproduce them in the examination room.

The Holter monitor system is specifically designed to accommodate companion animals. It comprises a small ECG monitoring device with a flash memory card which continuously monitors the pet’s heart waveforms over a 24 hour period. The monitor is fitted in a harness to the patient, who is not encumbered or disturbed by the monitor’s presence. The monitor itself is extremely small (about the size of a two mobile phones side by side) and weighs only a couple of hundred grams. Adherent ECG pads are attached to the torso and bandaged in place. These pads are painless and are easily removed at the end of the monitoring period.

Owners are encouraged to keep a paper diary with any notable events during the time the monitor is in place. This simply records any observations which may correspond to cardiac dysfunction, along with the rough time of the event. This diary allows the cardiologist to home in on any events quickly and easily in the analysis period after the monitor is removed.

After the 24 hours is complete, the monitor automatically turns itself off. The patient returns to SARC where the card is removed from the monitor and the data is analysed by cardiac analysis software designed to examine and report on each of the many thousands of heartbeats individually recorded. This is no mean feat, as a typical dog wearing a monitor could have over 150 000 heartbeats recorded during the analysis period.

Expert analysis is of course required to interpret any events which do occur, and often it came come down to just a handful of heartbeats out of 100 000 which give away a carefully hidden cardiac condition. Thanks to the continuous monitoring capability now available, months or years of frustration looking for the smoking gun can now be avoided with the simple yet effective process of Holter monitoring.

If you have a pet or patient who you feel would benefit from Holter monitoring, please call cardiologist and pulmonologist Richard Woolley at the Southern Animal Referral Centre on (03) 9532 5261.

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