Abstract
Sheep could be an excellent research subject for large animal experimental studies because of their heart structure and physiology have a lot similarity to the human. Long term ECG monitoring is a convenient tool for human and possibly veterinary clinical practice and research. Continuous ECG recording can be used to monitor and evaluate body physiological responses in various experimental conditions. Experience on sheep ECG monitoring techniques is sparse and mostly focused on short term ECG recordings. We developed a peculiar technique of 24-hour sheep ECG monitoring based on the available data on large mammal model, where we tried to share some insights and practical solutions working with this type of animals for ECG monitoring by using several commercially available ECG monitors also used for the human practice. Some producer specific hardware and software characteristic that we found important in daily practice were also discussed. In conclusion, sheep as big animal is relatively good object for Holter monitoring experimental studies: ECG monitoring is easily affordable, registered ECG signal is of similar quality as in human clinical practice, which is sufficient for the heart rhythm monitoring and arrhythmia and conduction disorder diagnostics. Additional effort might be needed for 24-hour heart rate variability calculations because manual revision of software ECG signal interpretations is requiring, but short-term calculations can be made easy.
Highlights
Long term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, historically known as Holter monitoring
There are no neat solutions to this problem, so we started with knowledge based on human practice and on other mammal ECG recordings which mostly focused on short term (5 min.) ECG monitoring [1, 5, 7,8,9]
Errors of the automated analysis leading to false arrhytmia or heart rate variability parameter calculations if not corrected manually. a) Demonstrates a case of rather low wave amplitudes leading to relatively ‘deep’ T wave being considered as a QRS complex, marked as ‘D’; b) shows a case of a single unidentified QRS complex and several T waves marked as ventricular extrasystole (VEx), marked as ‘V’; c) a combination of errors where normal QRS complexes are defined as VEx and T waves defined as QRS; d) software failed to detect a sequence of several low amplitude QRS complexes
Summary
Long term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, historically known as Holter monitoring There are no neat solutions to this problem, so we started with knowledge based on human practice and on other mammal ECG recordings which mostly focused on short term (5 min.) ECG monitoring [1, 5, 7,8,9]. This sometimes led to excessive measures and precautions prolonging the procedure and sometimes to unexpected flaws resulting in failed record or loss of equipment.
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