News about the Apple Watch saving lives is always popping up everywhere, and we just received another one that will make us all remember how this little device is helping so many people around the world. This time, the wearable was capable of saving the life of Ken Counihan, a Cleveland resident that, thanks to alerts sent over elevated breathing, was later diagnosed with blood clots.
Counihan likes to keep track of what he does (one of the reasons why he decided to get an Apple Watch) and in October, one day he got an alert talking about his breathing, so he decided to go see a doctor. Unfortunately, aside from an X-ray, all he was prescribed was some medicine for bronchitis.
Counihan’s condition could’ve killed him overnight
But later in the night, his blood’s oxygen levels started dropping, which made his wife rush him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with blood clots all over his lungs – a condition that, according to doctors, might kill the patient if medical attention is not administrated. According to Counihan:
My blood oxygen—which is normally mid-90s, which is what is supposed to be, kind of 95 and up—started to get out to the mid-80s. It was 10 o’clock at night. My wife was very concerned. My son was very concerned. I was like ‘I just want to go to bed. I’m tired…and they were both like ‘No, you’ve got to get to the ER. They took me back to the CT scan and found that I had blood clots all over my lungs.
Doctor Lucy Franjic, who is an emergency medical physician at Cleveland Clinic, says that 60% of the people diagnosed with clots in their lungs do not make it to the next day so, if it weren’t for the alerts that made him look for medical attention, the worse might have happened.
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