Rapid, Pounding, or Fluttering Heartbeat

Rapid, Pounding, or Fluttering Heartbeat stores a reported heartbeat sensation, often described as palpitations. It does not measure beats per minute or record the heart’s electrical rhythm.

Apple uses HKCategoryValueSeverity for this type. These are subjective labels, not a calibrated clinical scale. Unspecified is not the same as notPresent, and an unrecorded day is unknown. Do not average the integer codes or interpret their spacing as equal changes in symptom intensity.

No. Heart Rate is a numeric pulse measurement, while this category describes how the heartbeat felt. A report can be useful alongside a separately recorded pulse or ECG, but the severity code cannot be converted to beats per minute, a rhythm classification or an arrhythmia diagnosis.

A high-heart-rate or irregular-rhythm notification is also a different record. Do not merge a symptom report and an alert into one episode solely because their timestamps are close. Reports of a skipped heartbeat can describe a related sensation, but counting both types may double-count one reported experience.

Separately noted onset, duration, activity and accompanying symptoms can help describe an episode. The NHS lists exercise and lack of sleep among possible triggers, but this does not establish a trigger for an individual report. A logged observation is not continuous monitoring, and a retrospective entry may not pinpoint when the sensation began.

Seek medical advice when palpitations recur, become more frequent or last more than a few minutes. Call local emergency services for ongoing palpitations that do not settle, or palpitations with chest pain, breathlessness or feeling faint. If concerning symptoms have stopped, seek urgent medical advice rather than relying on a later normal pulse reading.

These are logged observations, not sensor samples on a fixed schedule. Compare explicit reported labels within a consistent logging routine and keep missing days separate from notPresent reports. Saved intervals and overlapping entries describe the source’s records; they do not establish continuous symptom duration or an exact number of episodes.

This HealthKit type is not listed in the current PulsHealth sync catalog. No corresponding records were found in the selected database research window, so severity frequencies, logging intervals and relationships with other measurements could not be calculated. That database coverage does not establish whether the symptom was experienced or whether reports exist in Apple Health.