The clinical effect of arrhythmia monitoring after myocardial infarction (BIO-GUARD|MI):study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: The increasing use of implantable cardiac monitors (ICMs) allows early documentation of asymptomatic cardiac arrhythmias that would previously have gone unnoticed. The addition of remote monitoring to cardiac devices means that physicians receive an early warning in cases of new-onset arrhythmias. While remote monitoring has been suggested to increase survival in heart failure patients with implantable defibrillators, trials using ICMs for continuous electrocardiographic monitoring of cardiac arrhythmias in the postmyocardial infarction setting have shown that patients who experienced cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, and ventricular tachyarrhythmia have an increased risk of major adverse cardiac events.