Are pulse and heart rate the same concept?

In many hospitals, when doctors are performing treatment, they will use their hands to take the patient's pulse to check whether the patient's heartbeat is accelerated when they are not wearing a stethoscope. This leads many people to believe that pulse and heart rate are the same. It can only be said that in most cases, the pulse and heart rate are basically the same, but there are special cases. The pulse is the pulsation of the artery, and the heart rate is the number of heartbeats, and there is still an error between them. Please read this article for details.

Pulse and heart rate are not exactly the same thing.

Heart rate refers to the number of times your heart beats per minute. The normal heart rate of a person at rest is generally between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Heart rate is regulated by the sympathetic nerves, the vagus nerve, and many chemicals in the blood (such as adrenaline, etc.). After activity, factors such as anger, excitement, fever, etc. can cause the heart rate to increase.

For some people, the heart rate in a resting state may be only 50-60 beats/minute, or even lower. However, as long as they do not experience symptoms of insufficient blood supply to the brain such as dizziness, black eyes, and fainting, and their heart rate can be increased according to the body's needs during exercise, then it can be considered normal. For example, many athletes have a slow heart rate when they are at rest due to long-term exercise, which results in strong myocardial contraction and high blood ejection efficiency.

Heart rhythm is another concept related to heartbeat, which is easily confused with heart rate. Heart rhythm refers to the rhythm of your heartbeat. If the rhythm of the heartbeat is inconsistent, it is called "arrhythmia", such as atrial premature beats, ventricular premature beats, sinus arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation and so on. Simply counting heart rate without looking at the heart rhythm on an EKG or ECG monitor can cause us to miss a lot of important diagnostic information.

The pulse is the pulsation of an artery that can be felt on the human body surface. Arteries have a certain degree of elasticity. The fundamental reason for the periodic pulsation of arteries is the contraction and ejection of blood by the myocardium, which causes periodic changes in intravascular pressure. In most cases, the pulse frequency and heart rate are consistent, but there are some special cases.

The pulse rhythm reflects the rhythm of the heart. The pulse rhythm of a normal person is regular, but that of a person with sinus arrhythmia may change with breathing. The arterial rhythm of atrial fibrillation is absolutely irregular, the pulse strength varies, and the pulse rate is less than the heart rate, which is called pulse deficiency; those with premature beats forming bigeminy and tripegemny may form bigeminy and tripegemny; those with second-degree atrioventricular block may have pulse omission.

In addition, the pressure changes of the pulse can provide a lot of additional information that cannot be obtained by simply measuring heart rate or electrocardiogram. Different pulse waveforms may indicate different diseases related to the cardiovascular system. If you feel any abnormality, further examination is needed.