The Apple Watch ECG Saved This Mom and Her Unborn Baby
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We’ve reported numerous times about how the Apple Watch has saved users’ lives, and today, we can add another save to the list — two, in fact. A San Diego woman credits the Apple Watch’s ECG feature with saving both her life and the life of her unborn baby.
As reported by ABC News San Diego, Rachel Manalo was 18 weeks pregnant when she began feeling her heart racing continually. After the symptoms persisted for a few weeks, she decided to use her Apple Watch’s ECG feature to measure her heart’s electrical activity. Manalo knows quite a bit about heart health, as she is a pediatric cardiologist who treats children with heart conditions.
I would feel tired, short of breath. I remember sitting down with the patient and giving a diagnosis. And I felt dizzy just sitting in my chair like I was about to faint. I click the EKG function on my watch. And then you place your finger on the crown and lay your arm still on the table. And it takes a recording for 30 seconds.Rachel Manalo
The Apple Watch returned a reading of “inconclusive” and showed that her heart had been beating at 150 beats per minute (bpm) for more than 40 minutes. The ECG app recommended that she see a physician. She rushed to UCLA in Los Angeles, where maternal and fetal medicine specialist Dr. Tina Nguyen examined her.
After the exam, Dr. Nguyen diagnosed her with ventricular tachycardia, a condition where the lower part of the heart isn’t working correctly, which results in insufficient oxygen in the blood. Plus, Manalo’s heart was working overtime, pumping twice the usual blood volume for her and her baby.
“That type of heart issue, if not taken care of, can lead to a heart attack. And then you add on that she was pregnant,” Dr. Nguyen explained. “We talked about everything. I said ‘so when did you start noticing this irregular heart rate, you know, when did you have symptoms’ And she said, ‘you know, my Apple Watch told me.’”
Manalo then followed all of the medically recommended procedures, resulting in a healthy pregnancy, although she did end up having an emergency C-section at 34 weeks.
“I told her (Dr. Nguyen), please, no C-section. But at that point, it was too late. My heart will not be able to handle a vaginal delivery,” she recalled.
Nguyen is also a specialist in informatics, which the National Library of Medicine says is “the interprofessional field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem-solving, decision making, motivated by efforts to improve human health.”
I want all the data. I want, you know, the patients to all wear Fitbits, all wear OURA rings and bring me all that information. Just having someone’s blood pressure when they’re at home and their heart rate can really change their pregnancy from the first visit forward. So that information is like gold to me.Dr. Tina Nguyen
Manalo’s daughter Samantha was born four pounds, five ounces, and the new mother was put on medication after her pregnancy to control her heart problem. She then had minor surgery to treat the problem, and two years later, both mom and daughter are doing fine.
While the Apple Watch certainly does not replace a thorough medical examination, its health monitoring features, including heart rate detection, blood oxygen measurement, and ECG feature, can certainly warn wearers of potentially life-threatening health issues.
Of course, Apple Watch doesn’t replace a medical check-up, but it helps to alert users when something is wrong. The ECG feature is available on Apple Watch Series 4 and newer models, except for the Apple Watch SE.
