Is pulse and Heart rate the same thing?

[northmississippi]

Is pulse and heart rate the same thing?

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

Yes..

[StudentOfHealing]

Yes. Also keep in mind the pulse is the reflection of sytole of the cardiac cycle. Keep in mind a pulse is important not only for knowing ... is it thready ... is it bounding ... as it reflects possible fluid status but it also important when assessing a cardiac dysthymia ...

Pulseless vtach vs vtach with pulse which are treated differently.

I hoped this help... I'm still a nursing student 3 weeks shy from graduation so you guys please correct me.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

technically yes and technically no.

YOU can have a heart rate without a pulse. The pulse is something that is palpated....the heart rate is a number.

[Ash1121]

Yes it is .... if you are taking a patient's pulse/heart rate on an automated device you may see it represented as "BPM," which stands for beats per minute, or "HR," which means heart rate. Hope this helps!

Ashley

[chare]

As Esme12 stated, it depends as the terms technically refer to two different concepts.

Heart rate refers to activity in the heart, which can be electrical or mechanical. An electrical impulse is conducted through the heart, and should lead to mechanical contraction with subsequent forward flow of blood which can then be palpated as a pulse beat. If each electrical impulse is conducted heart rate and pulse rate will be equal.

There are times that this won't be true, however. As StudentofHealing mentioned, the patient might have a dysrhythmia (pulseless electrical activity, pulseless ventricular tachycardia) in which you have electrical activity (heart rate) that does not create a mechanical contraction. In this situation you have a heart rate and no pulse. There are other dysrhythmias (premature atrial contractions, premature ventricular contractions, some tachyardias) where there was mechanical contraction with blood subsequent forward blood flow, but as it occurred early there was insufficient filling and this resulted in a pulse beat that was not palpable.

Good on ya mate for asking what many might have thought a silly question.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Maybe yes, maybe no. If you have, for example, atrial fibrillation, the pulse quality will vary depending on the amount of ventricular filling between ventricular contractions. Lots of time to fill > big booming output > strong pulse. Or it may be so negligible that a heart beat, that is, a ventricular contraction, results in NO peripheral pulse at all. Or somewhere in between. This is why the pulse in AF is irregular in quality as well as in rate, and why we take apical rate and radial pulses at the same time to see what the difference is.

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

To echo what some others have said....you could listen to the heart, hear it beat 70 times per minute and get a heart rate of 70. You could then feel a radial pulse. It is very weak (perhaps due to a weak heart) and only feel, for example 30 pulsations in a minute. However, in a "healthy" person 'pulse' and 'heart rate' are essentially interchangeable...though not necessarily one and the same.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Of course, if you have a pulsitile Ventricular Assist Device, the pulse and the heart rate are very different. Not a usual scenerio, however.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Ooooooh, getting all high-tech on me here! :) Gonna get me some of that VAD.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

Pulse Rate and Heart Rate are usually the same. They do not, however, describe the same thing. A pulse rate is basically a measurement of how many effective beats the heart does per minute. It's possible for the heart to be stimulated to beat and the output could be so very low that the output for that beat is basically zero. You might even hear a good S1S2 and not feel a pulse distally. You might see a good QRS complex on the monitor and not feel that pulse. That cycle didn't result in any effective output.

YOU can have a heart rate without a pulse.

And you can have a pulse in one part of the body but not in another.

The pulse is something that is palpated...

Or detected via doppler or LED spectroscopy (pulse oximetry).

One can think of the heart rate as a measure of the heart's activity (generally, contractions but you can also speak of the heart rate even if it's not contracting at all... that is, the electrical signal is occurring but the muscle isn't contracting)

The pulse is simply the pressure wave propagating through the blood after the contraction of the heart or manual compression of the heart.

So, a person can have a pulse without a heart rate (think CPR of an asystolic heart) and a heart rate without a pulse (think either pulseless electrical activity {PEA} or loss of peripheral pulses for various reasons {low SBP, occluded or constricted vessels, etc})

For most practical purposes, though, pulse rate and heart rate are essentially interchangeable.