A Cincinnati woman says her Apple watch woke her up because her heart rate was unusually high. Doctors later confirmed that she was suffering from a blood clot that would leave her with a 50/50 chance of survival.
The woman says that she went to sleep after feeling unwell, only for the Apple Watch to later wake her up by alerting her of a heart rate of 178 beats per minute.
This is far from the first time that an Apple Watch has been credited with helping to save a life, and the woman says that if it wasn’t for hers, she might not have woken up well enough to seek help.
The most severe and life-threatening of all clots
Dr. Richard Becker, a cardiologist at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine, told LOCAL 12 news that the type of blood clot the woman suffered from was particularly problematic.
“A saddle pulmonary embolism is the most severe and life-threatening of all, because it’s a blood clot that saddles both the blood vessel to the right lung and to the left lung,” Dr. Becker said. People who suffer from such a problem have just a 50% chance of survival. In this instance, the Apple Watch’s early warning may have been all the difference.
Thankfully, you don’t need to have the very best Apple Watch to benefit from this kind of alert. The modern Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra are obviously included, but older models are also capable of the same alerts. An Apple Watch Series 1 or later is all that’s required to receive high and low heart rate notifications.
In this instance, those notifications may have helped save the life of a 29-year-old woman who had no idea what was wrong with her other than she felt “lightheaded winded, and dizzy.”