Should you have a monitor placed under your skin to monitor your heart if you’ve had a stroke? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Implantable recorders, which are placed under the skin and monitor someone’s heart for a prolonged period of time, may help identify a heart condition known as atrial fibrillation in those who’ve had a stroke, two recent studies find. Michele Johansen, a stroke expert at Johns Hopkins, describes the findings.

Johansen: I think that the good question that it does answer is in patients that you really have concern for atrial fibrillation, an implantable loop recorder you shouldn’t give up. An implantable loop recorder is a wonderful mechanism that we now have to monitor patients over time. And that the majority of patients do really well. So I think that thinking about implantable loop recorders, the yield you get from an implantable loop recorder, that is a very viable way by which you can work up patients is a real takeaway from this article. We don’t need to wonder about that anymore.  :28

Johansen notes that correctly identifying the cause of a first stroke is paramount in preventing a second one, and implantable recorders can help. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.