A series of low heart rate alerts on her Apple Watch prompted a woman to get treatment — and discover she had an undiagnosed brain tumor that now needs constant monitoring.
Apple Watch has an ECG app, sleep tracking, blood oxygen level monitoring — or at least, it probably will again — and many more health-related sensors and capabilities. It does not include anything to do with monitoring the brain beyond mindfulness, yet for at least the second time, it has led to a brain tumor diagnosis.
According to the UK's tabloid newspaper The Sun, Sam Adams, a woman from Brighton, has now been recounting how a series of Apple Watch alerts in 2022 finally led her to seek treatment. They had each concerned an unusually low heart rate, but initially Adams had ignored them.
The alerts began after she returned from a trip to Costa Rica, and she put the heart rate down partly to exhaustion from an 11-hour flight and a 7-hour time difference. At that point, too, she was also under stress from having lost a parent, a dog, and having her marriage break down.
"The grief was literally almost unbearable," she said of the cumulative impact of so much loss over a short period. "It challenged my sense of identity and it left me struggling to move forward with anything in my life or business."
The trip to Costa Rica was meant to help, but she had an accident while she was there.
"I got out of my car looking at my phone to find a coffee shop and hit my head on a metal pole," she said.
After the Apple Watch kept alerting her to this low heart rate condition, she went to a pharmacists for a test, and the results were passed on to her local doctor. Adams says that the doctor phoned immediately, telling her to stop any exercise and come in the next morning for a further examination.
Those tests uncovered that she her heart had ectopic beats, meaning it has extra beats or palpitations. It's a common condition that can be caused by stress, a lack of sleep, anxiety and more, but it isn't usually a great concern — and yet in certain circumstances, it can be fatal.
Adams was taken to hospital where she reported having hit her head, so they ordered a CT scan. This was the point at which ultimately it was discovered she had an undiagnosed brain tumor.
"I was completely forced to face my own mortality, mentally it was huge," she said. "I slept sitting up and was terrified to go to sleep in case I wouldn't wake up."
Apple Watch gave an early warning
The tumor is believed to be benign, but because of where it is in her brain, doctors are reluctant to operate. She now has to have brain scans every month, and if it grows, it will have to be operated on.
She also has to take aspirin every day, and at one point had to have an operation to correct the irregular heart rhythm that her Apple Watch had helped detect.
"I am so grateful for my Apple Watch, I don't know what would have happened if [its alerts] had not gone off," she said. "I still live with the tumour, but I'm well, managing it, and grateful that technology gave me the early warning I didn't know I needed."
Adams would not have thought to seek medical help if it weren't for the Apple Watch's alerts over a low heart rate. It's one of many cases where the health sensors have led to investigations, including one In 2022, when alerts over an unusually high heart rate led doctors to discover cancer in a 12-year-old girl.
