An Apple Watch owner residing in Cleveland would be thanking the day he made a purchase of the smartwatch as the device kept on sending him alerts for something that later turned out to be blood cuts. Doctors say that few people have a chance for survival, assuming they do not get medical attention first.
Earlier check-up was not taken lightly; Apple Watch owner was only given medicine for bronchitis
Ken Counihan says that he prefers to keep track of what he does, which was the reason for purchasing the Apple Watch in the first place. One day, the wearable kept on sending him alerts, saying that his breathing was elevated. When he and his wife made a visit to the doctor, all they did was perform an X-ray and prescribe some medicine.
“I got an alert back in October that my breathing was elevated. So basically you have a certain number of breaths per minute, basically said I went from 14 to 17 or 18. My wife had me make a phone call to my son and he suggested I go to the outpatient care, get it looked at, which is what I did. And they just did an X-ray. And they gave me some meds for bronchitis at the time.”
Later in the night, Counihan’s blood oxygen levels started dropping, so naturally, his wife and son rushed to the hospital, where further diagnoses revealed that the Apple Watch owner had blood clots all over his lungs. Doctor Lucy Franjic, who is an emergency medical physician at Cleveland Clinic, says that blood clots are a serious condition and Counihan’s life would have been in the balance had he not sought medical attention earlier.
“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.”
Franjic says that 60 percent of the people that have blood clots in their lungs may not have woken the following day, indicating that while Apple Watch did not exactly alert him to this condition, the notifications he received were sufficient to warrant a doctor’s visit, which ultimately saved his life. Counihan certainly credits his wrist-mounted device for preventing an untimely demise, and as a precaution, he is on blood thinners and is feeling much better.
It is likely that any other Apple Watch alert he receives will likely concern him and force him to visit the doctor at the earliest time possible, but on these occasions, it is definitely better to be safe than sorry.
News Source: News 5 Cleveland
