Apple Watch Alerts Woman To Widowmaker Heart Attack

When it comes to heart attacks, the usual symptoms that we hear about are a pain going down the left arm and pain or discomfort in the chest. However, thanks to wearables like the Apple Watch with its built-in heart rate monitor and ECG tool, it has in the past managed to save lives by alerting the wearer to an unusual heart rate.

This is what happened with Diane Feenstra, a woman from Michigan who told WZZM 13 an incident in which her Apple Watch showed that she had a heart rate of 169 bpm even though she did practically nothing. She then went to a local urgent care center where based on an EKG the doctors performed on her, it was discovered that she had a widowmaker heart attack without her knowing about it.

According to Feenstra, “Unlike men who feel an elephant on their chest many times, a woman’s symptoms are very different. I had pain going down my left hand, I had a little swelling in my left foot, I had indigestion that I just explained away as acid reflux that I was experiencing as I got older. The biggest thing was pain in my shoulder and I figured I had vacuumed and put my muscles out of whack somehow.”

Thankfully, after visiting the Meijer Heart Center, she managed to get a stent put in to rectify the situation. She now credits the Apple Watch with saving her life by saying, “It’s such an easy thing to see what your heart rate is, had I not done that that morning, who knows, but I may have had another heart attack that would have been fatal.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Gadgets
Tags: Apple Watch, Health, Smartwatch, Social Hit, Wearable Tech