The internet is filled with stories of Apple Watch saving lives around the world. Added to the list is a man from Cleveland who believes it was his Apple Watch that detected his low blood oxygen levels.
As reported by News 5 Cleveland, Ken Counihan uses his Apple Watch to track sleep, exercise and other health metrics. “I’m very active and I like to track what I’m doing. It’s the calories,” Counihan told the publication. …I wear it to bed too — it tracks my sleep too,” he added. But last October, a smartwatch warned him of increased breathing. “We got a warning in October that he had more breaths, so basically he had a certain number of breaths a minute and basically he went from 14 to 17 or 18 breaths. I would say it has,” Counihan said.
Thinking the clock showed a mild illness, he went home to rest. “His wife told me to call his son and suggested that he go to homecare and have him looked at, so I did. Then they took an X-ray. At that time, they gave me medicine for bronchitis. “
However, the clock warned him again, indicating that something was wrong.
“My blood oxygen level, which is normally in his mid-90s, around his 95, which is what it should be, started going out in the mid-80s. It was 10 at night. His wife was very worried. My son was very worried. “I just want to sleep,” I thought. I’m tired…and we both said, “No, we need to go to the ER,” said Counihan.
He then underwent several scans, which found a blood clot on top of his lungs.”Thrombi must be detected early enough,” said Lucy Franzik, an emergency room physician at Dr. Cleveland Clinic. can become a life-threatening condition,” he said. “What the doctor said as a follow-up was that if I hadn’t been hospitalized, 60% of the people with this condition at that point said I would have been the closest if I had slept. Until tomorrow,” said Counihan.
