An Apple Watch Alert 'Saved' His Life

Apple Watch app tipped off James Green to a potentially fatal blood clot in his lungs
By Linda Hervieux,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 18, 2017 7:08 AM CDT

In what may be the best unpaid ad Apple could hope for, a Brooklyn man says the company’s smartwatch saved his life. James Green, 28, was wearing an Apple Watch last week when he noticed his heart rate spiking, the Telegraph reports. The warning came courtesy of the HeartWatch app, which tracks a wearer's ticker. "Saw my heart rate go up, ended up being a pulmonary embolism," Green tweeted on Friday. "Never thought a stupid lil wrist computer I bought two years ago would save my life." A blood clot in the lungs can kill quickly, the Telegraph notes. Green, a podcast reporter, says he was at home when got an alert from the app saying his heart rate was above its resting rate even when he was seated.

Along with other symptoms, Green, who suffered a pulmonary embolism once before, tells the Telegraph he realized it wasn't a panic attack. A CT scan confirmed his worries, and he was rushed to the hospital and put on blood thinners to "reverse the clot damage," he says. His doctor told him if he had waited longer "it would have been fatal." HeartWatch creator David Walsh calls it “truly humbling" his app played a role. He tells the Telegraph he designed the software two years ago after his father died at age 56 from a heart condition. The latest AppleWatch software alerts wearers if their resting heart rate rises above 120 beats per minute, per CNBC. Apple and Stanford researchers are studying the possibility of software that can track abnormal heart beats, which can be a tip-off to health problems. (At $399, the latest AppleWatch had a glitch.)

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