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A heart attack isn't likely to cause an irregular heartbeat (at least not until well after the damage has been done). It's common for heart attacks to cause car
by JshWright 12y ago
A heart attack isn't likely to cause an irregular heartbeat (at least not until well after the damage has been done). It's common for heart attacks to cause cardiac conduction anomalies called 'blocks', but these generally don't result in any irregularity of the pulse.
- melling 12y agoYeah, I'm simply throwing out a strawman. I have no idea what's possible or important. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man The important idea is that I'm not asking the wearable to tell someone that they're having a heart attack but simply indicate some one "test" is not within range.
- JshWright 12y agoUnfortunately, there aren't any tests that could be run at the wrist that would be even remotely specific for an MI. Really the only thing I can think of is some sort of transcutaneous monitoring of troponin levels in the blood, but that's hard to do (without needles) and a late indicator... troponin levels don't start rising for a few hours after the damage has started.
- rswail 12y agoWhile I was waiting to go into the angiogram, I was feeling my pulse... it was weird, there was three beats, then a gap, or three regular beats and a fourth straight after the third... was fascinating to listen to... Apparently I'm weird because I wanted to watch the angio. They kept telling me that they "didn't need my help" :) I was saying "how often do you get to see your insides?"
- JshWright 12y agoCool. That sounds like a pretty classic 2nd Degree Type 1 Atrioventricular Block (also know as a Wenckebach block). If the area of infarct impacts a part of the heart responsible for electrical conduction, stuff like that can absolutely happen, but it's not especially common.