Just the other day it was reported that the Apple Watch’s ECG feature had saved the life of a man by alerting him to a possible A-fib. Less than a week later, it seems that we’re hearing about yet another story of the ECG saving another life, this time of a 75-year old woman by the name of Liz Turner.In a report from NBCDFW (via 9to5Mac), it seems that Turner noticed something was wrong when her Apple Watch showed her heart rate at 180 BPM, considerably higher than her current max heart rate of 140 BPM. Speaking to NBCDFW, Turner said, “You don’t feel your heart beating right now, do you? No. I felt my heart coming out of my chest and it felt like it was just racing. It would have blown out of my chest if I had gone any further.”
Turner then used the ECG app to track her heart rate which she then shared with her doctor. Dr. Praveen Rao, an electrophysiologist at Baylor Scott & White Hospital, said that by using the ECG’s data, it allowed them to expedite the entire process and come to a diagnosis quicker, which turned out to be A-fib.
According to Rao, “The next step that we would do is say, ‘OK, why don’t you wear a monitor and capture what that rhythm strip is,’ but because her newer watch already had that feature put in, we were able to get the diagnosis that much faster.”
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