What you need to know
- A man's life was saved thanks to his Apple Watch.
- The ECG feature alerted him to an abnormally low resting heart beat.
- Eventually he discovered he needed heart surgery to correct the issue.
The Apple Watch seems to have possibly saved another life thanks to its ECG feature that monitors the heart. According to a report from Telegraph, a man was alerted to an unusually low resting heart rate that could have been life-threatening.
Paul Hutton, 48, was notified by his smartwatch that his heart rate was frequently dropping below 40bpm - a normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100bpm. After visiting his GP and being diagnosed with an low heart rate, the father-of-three cut out caffeine in a bid to resolve the issue. But his Apple watch, which was upgraded in September2017 to alert users when they have a low heart rate, continued to send him warnings.
After another visit to a heart specialist, he was diagnosed with ventricular bigeminy. He eventually underwent a three-hour cardiac ablation that fixed his issue.
During the surgery, for which he was fully awake but sedated, doctors burned tiny areas of faulty heart tissue.
This is yet the latest case in which the Apple Watch alerts a person to a serious heart condition before it gets any worse. Who knows what would have happened is Hutton didn't have an Apple Watch, but the worst case scenario is almost not worth thinking about.
ECG Apple Watch App: The Ultimate Guide
