If we have already mentioned several stories showing that Apple Watches can sometimes help save the lives of their users, the one that interests us today is particularly surprising. An American affirms that he owes his life today to his connected watch, which would have managed to diagnose him with a fatal infection. How does he explain this little miracle? What data analyzed by the object made it possible to identify the disease that could have led to the death of this man? SFR News tells you everything.
We knew the Apple Watch capable of saving the lives of skiers in bad shape or even of detecting potential internal bleeding, but the small connected watch from the brand with the bitten apple has once again surprised us. Today, it is the story told by a resident of Ohio which tends to show us that the precious high-tech bracelet could be able to identify certain infections, by establishing a surprisingly precise diagnosis.
If most people use their Apple Watch to track their physical activity or read the messages they have received, for Ken Counihan, this connected watch represents much more: it is the object to which he owes his life. This Cleveland resident was already using the Apple-made toquante for many tasks, such as taking calls, tracking his workouts, listening to music and monitoring his daily health. At the microphone of the local channel News 5 Clevelandhe explains :
“I’m very active and like to track what I’m doing, especially the calories. I only take it off to charge it, and I also wear it to bed to track my sleep.”
His watch flanked by the bitten apple had therefore been part of his daily routine for a long time, when last October Ken Counihan realized in spite of himself that it could play an even more important role.
“I was alerted that my respiratory rate was high. Basically, you have a certain number of breaths per minute, and I had gone from 14 to 17 or 18. My wife asked me to phone my son, and he suggested I go to the emergency room to get checked out, which I did. a bronchitis.”
But what Ken Counihan suffered from was actually much more serious, and it is once again thanks to the smartwatch from Apple that he discovered it.
Apple Watch’s Blood Oxygen feature saves his life
Thinking that he was therefore only suffering from a small bronchitis, Ken Counihan then returned home. And as he was getting ready to go to bed, his smartwatch gave him a new alert that made him realize that something was wrong and that the situation was more serious than it seemed.
“My blood oxygen level – which is normally around 90, which it’s supposed to be, i.e. 95 and up – started going down to 80. He was 10 p.m.. My wife and my son were very worried, but I just wanted to go to bed, I was exhausted… But my wife and my son said to me: ‘No, you have to go to the emergency room!'”
Ken complied, and once back at the hospital, he communicated to the nursing staff the alarming figures recorded by his Apple Watch. He was then made to pass additional examinations at the end of which the doctors understood that he suffered from a disease much more dangerous than bronchitis.
“They put me through a CT scan and that’s when they found out I had blood clots all over my lungs.”
Also questioned by News 5 Clevelandemergency doctor Lucy Franjic explained that these blood clots could have cost the life of her patient:
“Blood clots can put patients’ lives at risk if not caught early enough.”
“The doctor told me that if I hadn’t gone back to the ER and gone to bed I might not have woken up the next day, that’s what happens to 60% of people with this disease”said Ken Counihan in front of the cameras of the Cleveland news channel, before confiding how grateful he was that his Apple Watch had saved him:
“I have three children and two grandchildren, and I hope there will be more in the next two years. I have friends who bought an Apple Watch thanks to my story. This thing m saved my life! It’s amazing!”
The Apple Watch: a new ally for doctors?
If the Apple Watch will never replace the diagnosis of a healthcare professional, Dr. Lucy Franjic nevertheless echoed the praise of Ken Counihan by confirming that connected watches really help doctors on a daily basis:
“We see patients who notice that their heart rate is higher than usual or that their heart rate is abnormal. This information can help the doctor diagnose an underlying problem and prevent any life-threatening emergencies.”
What is certain is that this case highlights the fact that several data collected by digital tappers can be used in concert to establish diagnoses. The Apple Watch alone obviously can’t detect a blood clot, but it can help provide data that can guide doctors in their analyses. It is in any case one of the first times that the function dedicated to analyzing the presence of oxygen in the blood of the Apple Watch is used for this purpose. And although Apple assures that this one is “solely designed for fitness and general well-being”this data can clearly be useful in situations like the one experienced by Ken Counihan.
