The pediatric heart specialists at Norton Children’s Heart Institute, affiliated with the UofL School of Medicine, may recommend an event monitor to help identify your child’s heart rhythm during certain situations. Your child may wear an event monitor for a long period of time, such as days or weeks. It will record the heart’s rhythm when certain symptoms occur.

Norton Children’s Heart Institute offers pediatric heart diagnostic services at satellite locations around Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

An event monitor uses self-adhesive electrode patches that stick to the chest. Wires run from the electrodes to the event monitor. Your child will wear the monitor on a strap around the neck or clipped to clothing. When your child feels certain symptoms, such as chest pain, lightheadedness or heart palpitations, you or your child push a button to trigger the event monitor to record.

Types of event monitors include:

• Automatic monitor: It records on its own whenever symptoms occur, and also can be activated by hand. A child will wear an automatic monitor if symptoms happen only once in a while or while the child is sleeping.
• Loop recorders: It records not only the symptom that triggers the monitor to record, but also a short period before and after the symptom.
• Post event recorders: It starts an EKG recording from the moment you or your child triggers it when a symptom occurs.
• Ambulatory cardiac telemetry (ACT): This kind of monitor requires no activation; it automatically detects, records and transmits the heart’s activity.

Your pediatric cardiologist will determine which kind of monitor is appropriate to best evaluate your child’s heart rhythm.

Why Choose Norton Children’s Heart Institute

• Norton Children’s Hospital has been a pioneer in pediatric cardiothoracic surgery, performing Kentucky’s first pediatric heart transplant in 1986 and becoming the second site in the United States to perform an infant heart transplant.
• The American Board of Thoracic Surgery has certified our cardiothoracic surgeons in congenital heart surgery.
• The Adult Congenital Heart Association has accredited Norton Children’s Heart Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program as the only comprehensive care center in Kentucky and Indiana treating adults born with a heart defect.
• More than 17,000 children a year visit Norton Children’s Heart Institute for advanced heart care.
• Norton Children’s Heart Institute has offices across Kentucky and Southern Indiana to bring quality pediatric heart care closer to home.
• The Jennifer Lawrence Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) at Norton Children’s Hospital is the largest dedicated CICU in Kentucky, equipped with 17 private rooms and the newest technology available for heart care.