What You Can and Can’t Do While Wearing a Holter Monitor

Most patients who are outfitted with a Holter monitor for the first time have plenty of questions about what activities could interfere with their test results. Although the doctor technician who set up your Holter monitor should have given you a brief overview of what to avoid, chances are you found yourself wondering about whether you could still do certain activities after you got back home. That’s why this blog post is designed to provide a comprehensive list of what you are safe to do and what you should avoid during a Holter monitor test.

What You Can Do

• Go about your daily business
  • Holter monitors are designed to be worn while patients are on the go, and should not hold you back from living your life. You can still run errands, go to work, visit friends, and participate in other daily activities while wearing a Holter monitor.
• (Light) Exercise
  • While wearing a Holter monitor, you can do low impact workouts. However, keep in mind that more demanding exercises may disrupt your Holter monitor results. Frequent movement or excessive perspiration can loosen the adhesive that holds the electrodes in place, compromising the quality of your test results.

What You Can’t Do

• Get too close to high-voltage areas
  • Electrical interference could result in faulty readings, meaning you would have to redo the test entirely. Besides, common sense dictates you should probably avoid high-voltage areas even when you aren’t wearing a Holter monitor
• Get your Holter Monitor wet
  • Avoid swimming, bathing, and strenuous exercise that may cause you to sweat heavily. Instead of showering, you can use wet wipes or soapy washcloths to clean your body. However, be careful not to get the monitor, leads, or electrodes wet while using wipes or washcloths.
• Get too close to strong magnets
  • Powerful magnets can interfere with the Holter monitor’s electronics and skew your results.
• Use certain electronic devices
  • Certain devices can interrupt the signal from the electrodes and distort your Holter monitor test results. Stay away from microwaves, electric blankets, electric toothbrushes, electric razors, and metal detectors. If you absolutely need to go through a metal detector, then walk through it at a normal pace.
• Let Cellphones or MP3 players get too close to your Holter Monitor
  • Although you can still use these devices while wearing a Holter monitor, be sure to keep them at least 6 inches away from your monitoring device at all times.

Physicians Ancillary Systems Holter Monitoring

Thinking about diversifying your practice and increasing revenue by investing in a Holter monitor service? Look no further than Physicians Ancillary Systems! We provide 3-channel digital Holter monitors for increased signal quality and rhythm recognition. You’ll achieve Advanced Arrhythmia Detection with our FDA-approved analysis platform and certified technicians. Our service team does all of the monitoring and scanning of data to build a full report ready for physician review.

Curious to see how we stack up against the competition? Download our comparison chart to see how our Holter monitor compares with our leading competitors!