Diagnostic and Monitoring of Atrial Fibrillation Using Wearable Devices: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a supraventricular arrhythmia in which an irregularity in atrial electrical activity causes the atria to lose their ability to contract efficiently. This causes the heart to fail and is an increasingly legitimate risk factor for palpitations and clot formations that can cause stroke. Patients suffering from this cardiac pathophysiology require constant monitoring of their cardiac activity, requiring regular visits to the cardiologist or the use of constant cardiac monitors. To increase the quality of life of these patients, wearable devices can be used to remotely monitor and detect cardiac arrhythmias in real time. This work aims to do a scoping review on the use of wearable devices for the detection and monitoring of AF. To implement this process, a computational tool, StArt (State of the Art by Systematic Review), was used to assist the researcher in the application of this technique. A total of 1979 articles were selected at first; in the end, 10 articles were kept for further evaluation. The results of this review showed that, not only are new technologies being made to detect AF, but existing devices are being tested for their validity and feasibility in clinical settings. To test for device validity, a 12-lead ECG is the gold standard against which these existing or novel devices’ screening are compared to, being cited in more than half of the final ten articles as their reference standard. All in all, the studies showed great accuracy, with sensitivities being all in the 90th percentile, on average, and all articles concluded that the study of devices had various clinical benefits and were viable options for AF detection in the future.