What Complete Heart Block Looks Like on Your Watch ECG

Key Takeaways

Tell-tale signs of Complete Heart Block include no relationship between P waves and QRS complexes, more P waves than QRS complexes, and regular P-P and R-R intervals.
Complete Heart Block is the most severe atrioventricular heart block.
If you believe you have Complete Heart Block, contact emergency services and your healthcare provider immediately.

Tell-tale signs of Complete Heart Block include no relationship between P waves and QRS complexes, more P waves than QRS complexes, and regular P-P and R-R intervals.
Complete Heart Block is the most severe atrioventricular heart block.
If you believe you have Complete Heart Block, contact emergency services and your healthcare provider immediately.

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Introduction

Hello, heart hero. In your quest to identify that irregular heart rhythm you just felt, you may have come across the terms Complete Heart Block, Third-Degree Atrioventricular Block, Third-Degree AV Block, or Third-Degree Heart Block. Wow, that's a lot of terms for the same abnormal heart rhythm... With your trusty watch ECG now in hand, you may be wondering, "What does Complete Heart Block look like on my watch ECG?" In this guide, we'll help you see Complete Heart Block on your watch ECG. Let's dive in.

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What's Complete Heart Block?

Before trying to identify Complete Heart Block on your ECG, it's helpful to remind yourself what Complete Heart Block actually is. (If you're confident in your Complete Heart Block knowledge, though, skip on ahead to the next section for some visual examples of a Complete Heart Block ECG).

To start, remember how your heart beats? It produces an electrical signal, which squeezes and unsqueezes your heart, which in turn pumps your blood to your lungs for oxygen and then out to the rest of your body.

Well, your heart has this great structure called the atrioventricular node, or AV node. It's a fancy word for the part of your heart that connects your heart's upper chambers, or atria, with your heart’s lower chambers, or ventricles. This connector lets your heart's electrical signal move from your atria to your ventricles, which is why it's called the "atrioventricular" node. Neat, huh?

Complete Heart Block, or Third-Degree Atrioventricular (AV) Block, is an abnormal heart rhythm where your heart’s electrical signal can't move from your atria to your ventricles. In other words, your AV node is "completely blocked."

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So What Does Complete Heart Block Look Like on My Watch ECG?

To identify Complete Heart Block on your ECG, look for these tell-tale signs:

More P waves than QRS complexes in your ECG.
No relationship or correlation between your P waves and QRS complexes.
A regular P-P interval, or the distance between the peaks of your P waves.
A regular R-R interval, or the distance between the peaks of your QRS complexes.

For visual examples, take a look at Complete Heart Block seen on Qaly members' watch ECGs.

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Here's Complete Heart Block caught on a Qaly member's Apple Watch ECG. Notice there are about twice as many P waves than QRS complexes, with no relationship between the P waves and QRS complexes. See those P waves at the 4s mark and the 7s mark?

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Here's another Complete Heart Block caught on a Qaly member's Apple Watch ECG. Notice there's no relationship between the P waves and QRS complexes. Here, the P waves are those wider waves after the tall, spiky QRS complexes. Notice the regular P-P and R-R intervals.

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Here's another Complete Heart Block caught on a Qaly member's Apple Watch ECG. Again, notice the regular P-P interval and regular R-R interval as the P waves and QRS complex do their own thing throughout the rhythm, without being tied to each other.

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Is Complete Heart Block a Cause for Concern?

Yes. If you believe you have Complete Heart Block, contact emergency services and your healthcare provider immediately.

Complete Heart Block is the most severe AV heart block, resulting in a slow pulse or no pulse. It's often first discovered during an emergency, and it can affect your blood flow to your brain and body.

If you're curious to learn about other heart blocks, here's what First-Degree AV Block looks like on your watch ECG, here's what Second-Degree AV Block Type 1 looks like on your watch ECG, here's what Second-Degree AV Block Type 2 looks like on your watch ECG, and here's what 2:1 AV Block looks like on your watch ECG.

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Conclusion

Well, that just about wraps up our guide on what Complete Heart Block looks like on your watch ECG. We hope this could be of some help to you.

If you still need help interpreting your ECGs, don't worry, we understand how scary and confusing it can be to experience irregular heartbeats. That's why we created the Qaly app for you and for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who live with heart palpitations and abnormal heart rhythms. On the Qaly app, human experts will interpret your ECGs within minutes for clarity and peace of mind.

To get started with the Qaly app for free, grab the Qaly app from the App Store or Play Store today. If you have any more questions, or if you need our help in any other way, don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@qaly.co.

As always from the team at Qaly, stay heart healthy ❤️