Talk:Pulse

On merging
Suggestion : heart rate and pulse rate are not exactly the same thing. Pulse rate can be palpated, typically in the radial artery at the wrist by the second fingertip (index) of a trained observer. The heart rate has been traditionally auscultated using a stethoscope. Pairing of the palpable pulse to the audible pulse is a good start but obviously neglects advances allowed by electrophysiology. The debate on this looks fairly old and minimally relevant.lbeben 01:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC) hence if merged it will lead to the school ofthought that they r the same whcih isnt true.

On a fundamental understanding this is true. Palpation of pulses and auscultation of heart sounds are time proven and antiquated tools in study of the heart. These terms are still valuable in study of healthy individuals. In an individual suffering from heart conduction disease such as atrial flutter, heartbeats may be gated by the AV node allowing only every second (2:1) third (3:1) or fourth (4:1) electrical impulse generated by the sinoatrial node to get through to the ventricles. Further understanding of this topic suggests study of contemporary Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVAD)s that blurs both of these terms as well as making blood pressure difficult to measure.

Well conditioned athletes
"A normal pulse rate for a healthy I'd just like to say that I don't really like the wording here. The thing is, while there is some correlation between how well conditioned you are and your pulse rate, you can't say that a certain pulse rate means you are well conditioned. Obviously this is my own research, but I almost never go above 60 BPM even with a sedentary lifestyle, and I quickly drop below 50 BPM if I run a few km per week. There's nothing strange or unhealthy about me, some people just have naturally low pulse rates.

So the problem here is that it implies things that aren't always true. I suggest changing the tone to a larger perspective, instead of talking about well trained athletes and such, lets just say that "the average human pulse rate is around 70 bpm, but rates as low as around 30 bpm and as high as 100 bpm have been recorded in healthy individuals". That's true and has little ambiguity.

I don't have any good sources for this, so I don't want to start editing, but I just wanted to point this out. 81.235.139.191 (talk) 12:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Pulse / Heart rate
What is the exact relation between pulse and heart rate? Do these terms mean the same thing (and should the articles be merged)? If not, the difference should be made clear and the articles should be linked to each other. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about medicine, I'm just wondering.) 212.90.80.75 16:16, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Pulse and heart rate are usually the same, unless the heart is not strong enough, and only pumps very little blood with some strokes. In that case, the heart rate can be (much) higher than the pulse. I'll make some changes. JFW | T@lk  17:20, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pulse annd heart rate are not the same. Pulse is a measure of the heart rate, however it also has other properties which are characteristically changed in some diseases: rhythm, fullness and the shape of the pulse wave. User_talk: Eleassar777


 * Pulse and pulse rate are different. When a doctor says pulse it encompasses several things - rate (beats per minutes - normal vs. tachy vs. brady), rhythm (regular, regularly irregular (present in second degree heart block), irregular irregular (present in atrial fibrilation)), pattern/type (normal, pulsus tardus et parvus, pulsus paradoxus, pulsus bisferiens), strength (strong, normal, weak, absent).  Heart rate and pulse are distinct from one another - see pulsus paradoxus. Nephron 04:47, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

a function of mass?
My suspicion is that a person's resting pulse rate is a function of body mass. The smaller the mass the higher the pulse rate. In order to maintain a particular flow volume there is more friction and less momentum per pulse in the smaller system thus a higher pulse rate needed. See:

http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/teaching-math/360/014.pdf


 * Firstly: why are you announcing this here? Wikipedia is not a forum for original research.
 * Secondly: how would you propose the feedback system would work if pulse rate were a function of the BMI? Through the hypothalamus??? :-) JFW | T@lk  01:31, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PULSE 8 HEART RATE

The values given in the section about palpability of the pulse are somewhat a myth. A lot of people believe these values to be incorrect or at least misleading.

For example, in the book on the clinical examination I use (A.Kocijancic, Klini&#269;na preiskava, Littera Picta, Slovenia, 2000), it is written that the brachial pulse is palpable when the systolic pulse is at least 50 mmHg. So this is close to saying that it is not palpable under 50 mmHg (and not under 80 mmHg). User; Eleassar777

I agree, this is probably an oversimplification. I work with newborn and prematurely born children. It is possible to feel a pulse here also, in spite of blood pressure being real low at times. I suspect body habits is a factor. When the patient weighs 0,5 kg the blood pressure need not be high to be felt. --Ekko 08:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

The longest time without a pulse rate
The following was added to the article on 9/27/2005 by 4.154.204.183. Google verifies it, but it has serious stylistic problems and it was not well-placed well within the article. I reverted and placed the passage here in case someone else can find a good place for it. -Abe Dashiell 00:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

"The longest time a person survived without a pulse in their vacular system is 3 days Julie Mills was at the point of death from severe heart failure and viral myocarditis when on Aug 14 1998 surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford used a nonpulsatile blood pump to support her for a week in which her heart recovered and the pump was removed Longest time survived without a pulse"

This is a compelling case if it can be encyclopedically documented with emphasis on writing fundamentals.

This is incorrect as patients around the world (Canada, USA, Hong Kong, Australia) are routinely supported to recovery or tranplantation in a nonpulsatile cardiovascular state using a similar strategy as at the Radcliffe. The support system is called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and has been employed successfully in babies as small as 1.8 kg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.20.176 (talk) 01:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Re:- Merge
I'd be inclined to just delete resting pulse, or have it direct here. It contains no information that isn't already in the main Pulse article. If someone wanted to expand on the concept of a resting pulse rate and the factors affecting it (age, health etc..) then it might be worthy of its own article, although I doubt it really. As it stands it reads like a dictionary definition and adds nothing. --John24601 22:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi, I added the merge signs for people into the subject to give their opinion, and I agree with you to delete the contents of Resting pulse and make it a re-direct. Poulsen 22:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that Dick Cheney has had no pulse since 2009, when Fairfax INOVA hospital implanted a pulse-less, continuous rotor heart assist device within his chest. The continuous rotor device pumps blood continuously without a pulse. This device is unique to neither Darth Vader nor Dick Cheney. The device is available at first-line heart centers world-wide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.18.54.173 (talk) 23:38, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

"Pulse" or "pulse rate"?
Is it correct to say "a pulse of 60 bpm" or "a pulse rate of 60 bpm"? It seems to me one or the other must be correct, but not both. The current article seems to treat the two uses as equivalent. --Ds13 05:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The pulse is a sign which has 3 main characteristics - the rate, the rhythm, and the strength. In good clinical practice, the person who checks the pulse will assess and record all 3 of these. However, in most cases any rhythm disturbances will be chronic (and therefore insignificant) or emergent(therefore presenting symptoms which indicate an immediate electrocardiogram, which is far better at determining the exact rhythm, so rhythm isn't really that important. Similarly, strength of the pulse is much more objectively measured via blood pressure, so it's not often commented on. Consequently, the pulse rate is the only clinically important feature of the pulse in its own right, the other two are rarely checked and are, in any case, better assessed via different methods. As for how you describe it, it doesn't really matter, although if you were being super accurate I guess I'd go for the second of your two options. --John24601 09:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * John24601, thanks for the comprehensive response! --Ds13 17:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Death
"The lack of a palpable carotid pulse is often an indication of death." Seriously? No WAY! Why is this even in this article? --158.59.25.127 (talk) 01:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Absence of central pulses doesn't always indicate death - a carotid pulse usually indicates a systolic BP less than 60 - if you have a monitored patient in ICU it's perfectly possible to see a BP in the 40/20 range with no palpable pulse, but the body is still perfused (to a degree) and the patient is alive. --John24601 (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention that there are people living on assistive heart devices who don't have a pulse. 173.2.165.251 (talk) 13:26, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

history
this looks interesting

History of the Pulse?
The page on the circulatory system has a good "history of discovery" section, some of which I think belongs on this page also. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.73.203 (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Nadi pariksha
An article of Nadi pariksha have been created. Maybe you would like to have a look at it. Thanks. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 12:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)1
 * I've redirected it. The sources are very poor, and it's just a pulse evaluation technique, so I've redirected it to a parent article, IRWolfie- (talk) 18:32, 25 May 2013 (UTC)2

Too many incorrect links: this article's title needs to be disambiguated
I noticed that there are many incoming links to pulse that are about different meanings of the same word, such as Pulse (physics) or Pulse (signal processing). Should this page be renamed to Pulse (medicine) so that these incorrect links can be corrected more easily? Jarble (talk)

Historical use
For future editors: "A Brief Journey into the History of the Arterial Pulse" (2011) --156.22.9.252 (talk) 23:07, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Problem with this page and redirect
"Pulse rate" is a redirect to this article, however the article heartrate begins with "Heart rate (or pulse rate)". There's obviously a sort of contradiction here, but I'm not sure how it should best be resolved. I've also posted to the talk page for "heartrate" here, so let's please keep conversation on that page so as not to cause confusion by having simultaneous discussions on the same topic on two different talk pages. Vontheri (talk) 16:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC)