Apple Watch did it again! Apple’s sophisticated smartwatch has a number of invaluable health features that have proven their ability to save lives over the years.
Now the latest example is an incredible story about how Apple Watch’s heart health features can help uncover hidden problems that could prove fatal if not discovered early.
CBSNews interviewed Kim Durkee, a woman originally from Maine, United States, who two nights in a row received notifications from her Apple Watch warning her that her heart was suffering from atrial fibrillation, a type of abnormal heart rhythm that can be caused by the poor blood pumping from the heart.
At first, Kim thought the watch had misreads, but then she received another warning with sky-high values that worried the woman:
The third night, the numbers were a bit too high for normal. So I said, ‘You know what? Go to the emergency room, if they tell you there’s nothing to worry about, get rid of the watch.’
Unfortunately, to Kim’s surprise, the Apple Watch was indeed warning of atrial fibrillation and the cause was an unknown and aggressive tumor:
Doctors in Maine soon confirmed that her heart was beating erratically for a simple and terrifying reason. She had a myxoma, a rare, fast-growing tumor that was choking on his heart’s blood supply and would have eventually caused a stroke.
Due to Kim’s watch warnings, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital managed to remove the deadly tumor during a five-hour open-heart surgery.
In particular, the woman had no symptoms other than the atrial fibrillation that the Apple Watch detected and alerted, so, according to doctors, the rapidly growing four-centimeter tumor would have killed her if it had not been discovered in time.
Now Kim is recovering at home and says the Apple Watch “really saved her life.” CBSNews notes that “many people who bought Apple watches contacted her after hearing her story.”
Due to stories like Kim Durkee’s, the Apple Watch is becoming a guardian of the health and well-being of users. Not for nothing Cupertino, California, exceeds the threshold of 100 million smartwatches assets that monitor the health of its users.