The Apple Watch’s heart monitoring tech has apparently helped identify a heart condition in yet another user, as shared on Reddit over the weekend.
User ClockworkWXVII wrote that his Apple Watch led to him being diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). This is a heart condition which causes a rapid heartbeat. It is caused by faulty electrical signals in the heart that originate above the heart’s lower chambers.
He writes that:
“I was laying in bed, enjoying some TV and homemade brisket, when my Apple Watch told me that my heart rate was weird af, and then, told me my heart rate was stupid fast (thank you heart rate alerts). Called ER, when they arrived, they found me in serious trouble. Body went into shock, got rushed to the hospital in a stretcher, and got taken into trauma. I felt totally fine before everything happened, and then notifications, and then BAM, everything goes nuts. 100% thank you apple for making an amazing accessory and tool that helps people stay not dead.”
Answering questions from other users, ClockworkWXVII says that the dispatcher he spoke to “used the Apple Watch reading rather than having me take my own pulse. Paramedics took a pile with their own tools once they arrived to confirm.”
Saving lives, reading heartrates
This is only the latest example of an Apple Watch being used to recognize a heart problem. By now, this is probably the most significant selling point for the Apple Watch. The device’s heartrate-sensing abilities got even better when Apple debuted the ECG feature with the Apple Watch Series 4. Since then, it’s diagnosed heart problems in quite a few Americans.
However, even before the ECG feature, Apple Watches were helping save lives. In findings of a study of 400,000 people, Stanford scientists concluded that the earlier Apple Watches are capable of safely identifying atrial fibrillation.
Source: Reddit
