Remote Monitoring (RM) has been shown to provide useful information about arrhythmic events in patients with implantable loop recorders (ILRs), however there is few and conflicting data about the false positive (FP) alarms burden and characteristics among ILR recipients. The aim of the present systematic review was to evaluate incidence and characteristics of FP alarms among ILR patients followed by RM. We developed a systematic research in Embase, MEDLINE and PubMed databases and selected all papers focused on false positive ILR transmissions published from June 1, 2013 to June 1, 2023. Case reports, meeting summaries, posters and simple reviews were excluded. Twelve reports were finally selected, including five prospective and seven retrospective studies. Information about population characteristics, device type and setting, overall transmissions and FP alarms and any adopted strategies to reduce them were extracted from an overall population of 3.305 patients. FP alarms were 59.7% of the overall remote transmissions and were found in 1/5 of the analyzed population. FP alarms for atrial fibrillation were the most common cause of false transmissions and were mainly due to premature atrial and ventricular complexes. No clinical predictors of FP alarms were identified, except for nonparasternal ILR implantation site. Since the overload work due to FP alarms might reduce the benefit of remote monitoring of ILR patients, the device optimization is an important step until an help from machine-learning algorithms is available.
Keywords: alarms; cryptogenic stroke; false positive; implantable loop recorder; remote monitoring; syncope; transmissions.
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