Apple Watch's heart rate monitoring credited with saving another life

The Apple Watch has saved another life, according to a post made to Reddit, where the Apple wearable is credited with alerting its owner to heart issues and prompting a call for assistance, shortly before a medical emergency took place.

The heart rate monitoring functions of the Apple Watch provides a number of ways to alert the user in the event of an irregularity, including if the heart is beating at an unusually high or low rate, or in the case of the Apple Watch Series 4, when the electrocardiogram function detects an atrial fibrillation (AFib) state. The notifications have led to a number of reports where users are warned of a problem that became more serious, with one surfacing on Saturday continuing the trend.

Posted to Reddit by "ClockworkWVVII" with the title "My Apple Watch just saved my life," the Redditor explains they received a high heart rate notification while relaxing in bed. The user then contacted the emergency services for medical assistance, as a preventative measure.

The paramedics arrived to find the user in "serious trouble," with their body described as having gone "into shock." The poster was put onto a stretcher and taken to the trauma center of the local hospital.

Later updates to the story reveal they were suffering from tachycardia and had passed out in the ambulance, before being revived in the hospital. An ECG confirmed all chambers of their heart were beating properly but faster than normal, a condition the cardiologist specified was supra-ventricular tachycardia or SVT.

ClockworkWXVII acknowledged the swift onset of shock following the alerts, advising, "I felt totally fine before everything happened, and then notifications, and then BAM, everything goes nuts." The user adds "Thank you Apple for making an amazing accessory and tool that helps people stay not dead."

The story is one of many instances where the Apple Watch advised of heart issues that later turned out to be serious. In March, it was credited with saving the brother of a radio show host for tachycardia, while in early April the rollout of the ECG app in Europe helped detect AFib in one German patient.