Smart watches for heart issues

[dicko]

I have yesterday bought myself a new iPhone, with £100 off. I went into the shop to look at Apple Watches and I am going to buy the series 11 watch as this does health and wellbeing things so with £50 off next week perhaps?

 

[tom73]

My point is that if you use a monitor that the NHS don't recognise they'll have a ready made excuse to ignore it if that's what they want to do.

I had two Bruce (treadmill) tests, two 24hr Holter monitors (ambulatory EGC recorders), a 7 day Holter, and more ECGs than you can poke a stick at, but the only times they ever saw my arrhythmia were the other ten occasions I fetched up at A&E in an ambulance. Having a monitor of your own isn't guaranteed to catch it, but it's a shifting the odds a considerable way in your favour.

Any HCP is free to ignore any home device readings. Regardless of being NICE approved or not. If my wife wasted her time on all this stuff she’d never get anything else done. Without the knowledge to see the much bigger hidden picture it‘s useless.
In fact any half decent HCP can detect AF via a simple pulse reading.

 

[vickster]

I have yesterday bought myself a new iPhone, with £100 off. I went into the shop to look at Apple Watches and I am going to buy the series 11 watch as this does health and wellbeing things so with £50 off next week perhaps?

John Lewis give an extra year warranty free 👍

 

[dicko]

John Lewis give an extra year warranty free 👍

Yes Apple shop have given me another year as well

 

[tom73]

I have yesterday bought myself a new iPhone, with £100 off. I went into the shop to look at Apple Watches and I am going to buy the series 11 watch as this does health and wellbeing things so with £50 off next week perhaps?

Apple Watch is great not used Apple pay on my iPhone for years. As I’ve always got watch, the health stuff is good be warned though collecting all the awards can get addictive.

 

[dicko]

Apple Watch is great not used Apple pay on my iPhone for years. As I’ve always got watch, the health stuff is good be warned though collecting all the awards can get addictive.

Precisely, that’s why I have budgeted for the latest series 11 watch. The shop where I bought my new ‘phone will specify to my requirements I.e. the strap, casing and knock a few £s off too.

 

[tom73]

Precisely, that’s why I have budgeted for the latest series 11 watch. The shop where I bought my new ‘phone will specify to my requirements I.e. the strap, casing and knock a few £s off too.

I only buy stuff off the Apple site always works out cheapest with my discount applied.

 

[Heavymental]

Thanks all. Interesting info. A friend is lending me an Apple Watch they no longer use and I'm thinking that will give me a useful indicator of what is happening and if the odd sensation I get occasionally is anything to worry about. If it's regularly showing something unusual I'll at least have a bit of data to suggest further enquiry might be useful. I'm hoping it'll put my mind at rest and that yes, I am just the 'worried well' and should stop bothering my GP.

 

[newts]

I've experienced occasional palpitations for many years & subsequent ecgs have not shown any issues. I have a Samsung Galaxy watch, by the time you tap the watch & set the ecg monitor going the palpitations are long gone🙁

 

[vickster]

Thanks all. Interesting info. A friend is lending me an Apple Watch they no longer use and I'm thinking that will give me a useful indicator of what is happening and if the odd sensation I get occasionally is anything to worry about. If it's regularly showing something unusual I'll at least have a bit of data to suggest further enquiry might be useful. I'm hoping it'll put my mind at rest and that yes, I am just the 'worried well' and should stop bothering my GP.

Check it's compatible, I think only from series 6 for the AF monitoring.
It won't tell you automatically if you're having AF, you need to touch the crown if you feel something is amiss, like a weirdly high heart rate or fluctuations
Good luck!

 

[vickster]

I've experienced occasional palpitations for many years & subsequent ecgs have not shown any issues. I have a Samsung Galaxy watch, by the time you tap the watch & set the ecg monitor going the palpitations are long gone🙁

I've never missed an AF episode with the Apple Watch, as they tended to last for sometime (longest was about 8 hours I think !)

 

[newts]

I've never missed an AF episode with the Apple Watch, as they tended to last for sometime (longest was about 8 hours I think !)

Luckily mine only last a few seconds before normal service resumes.

 

[oldandslow]

I have a slightly abnormal please heart best (I dont understand the mechanics, but apparently its noww to worry about even though it looks like my ticker has endured a mild hesrt attack) and its detectable on my old Fenix 6 with the correct app.

This and other comments are interesting. I've got a Fenix 5 following my double bypass six years back. However, I've always understood that wrist devices are of limited accuracy for heart monitoring. Certainly for exercise such as cycling, chest bands are very much preferred, not least because the wrist angle when riding can be unfavourable to the watch's reliable operation. So the general tenor of this discussion is to put more reliance on watches as measuring devices than I would have done.

I use my Fenix as part of tracking overall daily activity including steps, and because I can add a band into the picture (usually linked to a Garmin GPS) for more vigorous activities.

 

[OldShep]

Ive compared the data from my Polar H10 with my Apple Watch S8 many times. There has never been any significant difference in readings. The advantage with the wstch is i dont need to lick it to get it working. 😂
Note the ECG function doesn’t work if HR is below 50 bpm.

 

[presta]

Any HCP is free to ignore any home device readings

And any NHS device readings too when it suits them.

In fact any half decent HCP can detect AF via a simple pulse reading.

My experience of AF & the NHS is that half of them can't recognise AF when it hits them in the face.

I've experienced occasional palpitations for many years & subsequent ecgs have not shown any issues.

Same here, a decade or more of palpitations and nothing showed any problems right up until I was blue lighted into A&E.

Ive compared the data from my Polar H10 with my Apple Watch S8 many times. There has never been any significant difference in readings.

Is the Apple an infra red detector type?
IR detectors never show any difference on me either when I'm in NSR, but when I'm in AF at 210bpm the IR ones show 70bpm.

In the lobby at A&E, the paramedics were showing the triage nurse my ecg worriedly trying to explain that my HR was 200+, but she wouldnt take any notice of them because her IR finger clip said 70bpm.

They aren't reliable.