title: Ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring in healthy newborn infants.
abstract: Twenty-four hour ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring is a useful method to document dysrhythmias and to assess treatment response. Various studies have been done in the pediatric age-group to determine normal heart rate values. In this study we determined the heart rate and rhythm patterns of 25 healthy newborn infants whose ages ranged between 3-10 days (mean 6.5 days). There were 15 males and 10 females. The maximum heart rate in these infants was 175-231 beats/min (207 +/- 14), minimum heart rate 60-121 beats/min (93 +/- 16) and the average heart rate was 130-161 beats/min (143 +/- 9). Five infants (20%) demonstrated marked sinus dysrhythmia, seven infants (28%) had ventricular premature contractions, two infants (8%) had supraventricular premature contractions, and five infants (20%) showed junctional rhythm disturbance. The sinus pause did not exceed 1.2 sec and there was no evidence of atrioventricular conduction disorders, or supraventricular-ventricular tachycardia attacks. Our results were consistent with previous studies carried out in newborn infants. Dysrhythmias were detected during 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring in our study group. Since they were generally benign, they need no treatment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Cardiology, Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine, Ankara.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Alpay
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Celiker
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Lenk
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ozcan
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tanindi
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Işik
mesh_terms: D001146:Arrhythmia, Sinus / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D009200:Myocardial Contraction / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors