Healthcare providers opinions

[jrsharp70]

I thought I'd start a thread for people to kick around their thoughts about the new watch features.
***EDIT: I realize people don't want the world knowing what they do for a living, so I guess it should be a general discussion not limited to professionals

What scenarios can you think of where this could potentially benefit somebody? What do you think in general?

I'll kick it off, but I'd ask the moderators to have a low threshold for closing this thread.

The afib detection is cool. As far as the EKG goes, it's seems only of limited use. And it creates a lot of liability for any doctor you send it to. It's only 1 lead. It doesn't mean anything without a prior EKG to compare it to. And Any primary care physician you send it to is going to tell you to go to the emergency room no matter what it shows if you have any symptoms at all.

It'll be useful for
(if sinus) simply for rate, which the old watch showed anyway,
for SVT...
Maybe for QT prolongation?
Maybe AV block?
Maybe new BBB?

But what will be cool is, basically you get a cardiac event monitor (if you are symptomatic and trigger it), but a continuous monitor is what you'd want, rather than patient triggered, so I don't see it replacing any current technology.

That being said, I love technology and it's super cool. Time to invest money in eliquis

 

[jgraves1107]

I have the Kardia ecg device for the 4 finger contact and it can be quite useful if you exercise and want to see for yourself what your stats look like.

I don’t think one lead is as important as the fact it is designed to detect irregularities in the electrical signals to the heart. If you look at location leads are positioned on the chest for hospitals. That helps with location relative to the part of the heart that is acting up. With the watch it detects an anomaly no matter where in the heart it is. So if there is an irregular sinus then you can say here I did it 3 times and got the same result. My rheumatologist says that is all he needs for him to say yep you have a problem and we need to look further.

Slight variations in rhythm can indicate almost all types of issues. Including a potential stroke.

What makes this so bad is my daughter passed away earlier this year at 22. Lupus and her heart just stopped. Had this watch been available it could have shown the electrical signal loss to the heart. May not have saved her but would have told them to look at the brain stem for damage they missed.

Imagine the future where your heart has an issue and your hiking out in bfe with no one around. Your watch and phone could potentially change that electrical signal to keep you alive and stabilized so you can make it back to civilization.

 

[mac gadget freek]

Will be interesting to see if a S4 watch could be purchased with a medical savings account (or covered by insurance) in certain patients. Or some could get a prescription for it so it could be tax-deductible as "medically necessary".

 

[salscott]

I was just diagnosed with AFib and my cardiologist brought up the AW4 as not a bad idea for me

 

[tcuprof]

Healthline.com reports that .5% of the population has AFIB. That's a LOT of potential A4 buyers!