Using ambulatory electrocardiography during recovery from cardiac surgery.

diac monitoring may need to expand from the hospital to the home. We just completed a study in which we used intermittent loop recorders, a type of ambulatory electrocardiographic (ECG) device, to examine the incidence, timing, and symptoms of and risk factors for postoperative atrial fibrillation. In this article, we describe ambulatory ECG, discuss how we used this technique to monitor for atrial fibrillation after cardiac surgery, and present examples of 2 patients whose atrial fibrillation was detected by using ambulatory ECG.