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Sorry to read your cousin died this way. I don't understand. The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services
by rolltiide 7y ago
Sorry to read your cousin died this way. I don't understand.
The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services - and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart?
Or was it that he too passed out, the Apple Watch called emergency services, who resuscitated him enabling him to call his wife?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Topgamer7 7y agoThe former I think.
- function_seven 7y agoI think the watch detected his fall (which was a result of the heart attack)
- selimthegrim 7y agoCorrect. I had heard speculation he may have noticed ECG stuff but he was still conscious enough to call his wife.
- joshvm 7y agoThe specs for the watch specifically rule out heart attack detection, by the way. > Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call emergency services immediately.
- DuskStar 7y ago"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...
- rootusrootus 7y agoDifferentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.
- throwaway8689 7y agoI'd guess taking the watch off would produce a classic flat line. A heart in arrest which is in the process of dying will produce irregular electrical output.
- btach 7y agoSometimes the rhythm may degrade into a ventricular rhythm, like v-tach then into v-fib if not treated. A heart can still pump in v-tach, albeit very inefficiently, but in v-fib, no blood is pumped. On the other hand, taking the watch off results in no signal input which is different than what you would see on the monitor for asystole.
- manicdee 7y agoApart from the immediate “flatline” the watch also detects that it is not proximate to the skin. As soon as you take it off the watch disables things like ApplePay. It knows when it being/has been taken off.
- kirrent 7y agoWell the watch isn't measuring troponin levels so it's hard to imagine how useful it could ever be at MI detection, especially given the limitations of a poor contact single lead ECG.
- JshWright 7y agoEven if it could check a trop, that's a pretty late indicator. If you're having the big one, you're going to be dead before your troponin spikes.
- garmaine 7y agoIt absolutely can. It's more sensitive than equipment hospitals use. There's an ongoing data collection program to calibrate it for that purpose. But since it hasn't been approved by regulators for use as such, they'd be in legal trouble if they claimed otherwise.
- rootusrootus 7y ago> and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart The watch will call emergency services, then it will text your emergency contact(s) and let them know you've experienced a hard fall. I don't know exactly how, in this instance, that was then converted to a voice call. Edit: I see in another comment that he initiated a call himself because he was conscious enough to do so.
- selimthegrim 7y agoHis wife may have called him back in response to the text