Portable ECG equipment for the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation in the specialist health care: rapid HTA- scoping review
Health technology assessment
|Published
On behalf of the commissioner in the national system “Nye metoder” we have performed a scoping review of portable ECG equipment that is CE-marked for use in the specialist healthcare service.
Key message
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder, and the prevalence increases with age. Patients with AF have an increased risk of stroke, and early diagnosis is essential to be able to start preventive treatment. New equipment has been put on the market as an alternative to the current gold standard Holter ECG. On behalf of the commissioner in the national system “Nye metoder” we have performed a scoping review of portable ECG equipment that is CE-marked for use in the specialist healthcare service.
We carried out a rapid health technology assessment- scoping review. We obtained technical specifications, time consumption and costs from manufacturers and carried out a systematic literature search and sorted included publications. We also involved clinical experts and a patient representative in the work.
- We included 19 types of ECG equipment, of which eight are handheld and eleven use electrode patches.
- We included 41 publications
- Costs and estimated time of the examination provided by the manufacturers varied to a great extent. Equipment costs depend on the volume purchased, discounts and leasing agreements, and made it difficult to estimate the cost per patient.
- Estimated time spent on an ECG examination depends on preparations, and the duration of the recording, which affects the time for interpretation of the result.
We present the results both in this report and in the digital visualization tool EPPI-Vis, here:
