News oulets, and indeed, GNN, have reported multiple times that smart watches and their ability to monitor heart rate have saved lives.
But a Cincinnati woman was having a pulmonary embolism while she slept and the Apple Watch was able to detect it because unlike similar devices it measures heart rate also while the wearer is sleeping.
Not feeling well, 29-year-old Kimmy Watkins woke to find her watch beeping loudly.
It had recorded a resting heart rate of 178-beats per minute—equivalent to the high-intensity running or swimming for her age group.
Her doctors diagnosed her the next day with a pulmonary embolism, occuring when a blood clot gets stuck in an artery in the lung and blocks blood flow to part of the lung—a condition with a 50% fatality rate.
“I’m very lucky, and if my sleep hadn’t been disturbed, my partner would have found me asleep on the couch or not really asleep,” Watkins said.
Readers interested in turning on the heart rate tracker will find it under “Privary & Security” in settings, because the health data collected by apps on smartwatches and phones is not protected under law like traditional medical records.
Last September, an Apple Watch detected that a Englishman’s heart was in process of stopping—he was susceptible to suffering “sudden cardiac death” which as the same sounds, is very dangerous.
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He was rushed to the hopsital after an MRI discovered the issue, afterwhich he underwent life-saving surgery to fit a pacemaker.
“My wife keeps saying that she saved my life, and she’s not wrong,” said David. “If she hadn’t had bought me my Apple watch for my birthday, I wouldn’t be here.”
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