Apple Watch EKG

Apple Watch EKG

By

Mishal Shaheen

Apple watch can now perform Electrocardiogram, also known as EKG. It measures the electric signals that your heart uses to regulate your heartbeat. The point is to detect signs of atrial fibrillation, which is a form of irregular heartbeat that could cause a stroke of heart failure.

This Apple might keep the doctor away

This is actually a big step for Apple. You might think of this watch as a notification machine for fitness freaks who want to obsessively track every single step that they take with EKG, it is trying to become something different. Not just a fitness tracker but now a health monitor.

But that change now opens up to new questions. Do the doctors think it’s a good idea?? Are people going to use it the right way? Are we just giving people all this information that they do not even understand?

How does it work?

The EKG process is very simple. There are two sensors, one on the back and one on the crown. When you put a finger on the crown, you are completing the circuit from your finger to your heart and back to your wrist. This way, the watch can measure your heart’s electrical pulses. After 30 seconds, it will tell you if the upper or lower chamber of your heart are out of sync. If they are out of sync, it is time to go to the doctor.

Comparison

A lab grade EKG provides 12 different readings of heart activity. This will give you much more data to help pinpoint issues that you might suspect based on the watch’s read out.

Read impressive article on Handhelds and Children 

Should you be using it

The benefit of the Apple watch is that you will catch these troubling heart problems that you will otherwise never know about. But in fact, cardiologists don’t recommend using it to screen for heart problems unless you are already on risk. Recently they looked at whether EKG screening would help in people who are healthy and otherwise at low risk. They looked it for cardiovascular disease. There is no evidence that the benefits that will outweigh the harms, so we recommended against using EKG screening for people at low risk for CVD.

If you don’t have any risk, why would you use these watches in the first place? It could lead to false positive tests, so you must rely on ECG tests instead of these devices.