In the long effort to catch the heart's hidden misfires before they cause irreversible harm, a wearable ECG patch designed to monitor stroke survivors for undetected atrial fibrillation has revealed a quiet but consequential truth: presence is not the same as persistence. The CANDLE-AF trial, presented at ESC Congress 2026 in Munich, found that SEERS Technology's mobiCARE-MC100 patch detected atrial fibrillation in only 3.6 percent of cryptogenic stroke patients—compared to 10.6 percent for a smartphone-linked device patients could use freely throughout the year. The trial did not condemn the