Having lost a lot of fitness and put on weight in the last two years, I decided to get a cheap watch from Amazon to display my heart rate during any kind of strenuous exercise while I attempted to reverse the passage of time. There was one with thousands of good reviews, so I ordered that. As a watch it was great but the heart rate monitoring was all over the place, displaying a rate when I wasn't even wearing it. That went back.
Mrs R said "What about getting an Apple watch?" so after picking myself up off the floor and with official sanction to spend my life savings, I did. The v6 model, which uses an electrical sensor for heart rate, arrived last week.
I worked my way through the myriad of functions until I came to the ECG. I ran the 30 second test and at the end there was a chime and a warning displayed that the reading showed signs of atrial fibrillation and that I should contact my doctor. Two repeats, same result.
I googled the watch's ability to confirm AF and although there were reports of false positives for younger people who shouldn't have AF at all, there wasn't much about my age group, which one site said was unlikely to buy one anyway (cheek!). I persuaded Mrs R to try a test, which was completely and repeatably normal, so that at least indicated the watch could work as intended (and good news for Mrs R).
I rang my surgery. 10 minutes later, a doctor rang back wanting to know more. He knew about the watch's ECG function but had yet to come across anyone who had reported issues as a result of using it. We had a discussion about what the watch did and as we talked, I noticed that the watch ECG data appeared on my phone, with an option to create a pdf with graphical output content to send to my GP. He asked me to do this and that he would check it and ring back.
Five minutes later, a very excited GP rang back to say that the output showed classical AF and that I needed to go in to be assessed. What he was excited about was more the watch than my symptoms, as such! He was just very impressed by its output and said that if it verified, it could prove to be the best purchase I've ever made.
An ECG at the surgery earlier this week did indeed confirm AF and I've just had a barrage of tests prior to any anticoagulant use. I would never have known there was anything wrong with me if I hadn't bought the watch - all I knew that I wasn't as fit as I used to be which, given lockdown, wasn't exactly unexpected.
Anyway, very impressed with it all and despite the price, for me, it turned out to be a bargain. Hopefully, the AF has been caught at an early enough stage for treatment before the stroke risk ramps up as I age.
Mrs R said "What about getting an Apple watch?" so after picking myself up off the floor and with official sanction to spend my life savings, I did. The v6 model, which uses an electrical sensor for heart rate, arrived last week.
I worked my way through the myriad of functions until I came to the ECG. I ran the 30 second test and at the end there was a chime and a warning displayed that the reading showed signs of atrial fibrillation and that I should contact my doctor. Two repeats, same result.
I googled the watch's ability to confirm AF and although there were reports of false positives for younger people who shouldn't have AF at all, there wasn't much about my age group, which one site said was unlikely to buy one anyway (cheek!). I persuaded Mrs R to try a test, which was completely and repeatably normal, so that at least indicated the watch could work as intended (and good news for Mrs R).
I rang my surgery. 10 minutes later, a doctor rang back wanting to know more. He knew about the watch's ECG function but had yet to come across anyone who had reported issues as a result of using it. We had a discussion about what the watch did and as we talked, I noticed that the watch ECG data appeared on my phone, with an option to create a pdf with graphical output content to send to my GP. He asked me to do this and that he would check it and ring back.
Five minutes later, a very excited GP rang back to say that the output showed classical AF and that I needed to go in to be assessed. What he was excited about was more the watch than my symptoms, as such! He was just very impressed by its output and said that if it verified, it could prove to be the best purchase I've ever made.
An ECG at the surgery earlier this week did indeed confirm AF and I've just had a barrage of tests prior to any anticoagulant use. I would never have known there was anything wrong with me if I hadn't bought the watch - all I knew that I wasn't as fit as I used to be which, given lockdown, wasn't exactly unexpected.
Anyway, very impressed with it all and despite the price, for me, it turned out to be a bargain. Hopefully, the AF has been caught at an early enough stage for treatment before the stroke risk ramps up as I age.
