Apple Watch saves life again, helps detect blood clots in lungs!

As reported by News 5 Cleveland, Ken Counihan uses his Apple Watch to track sleep, workout sessions among other health indicators. “I am very active and I do — I like to keep track of what I’m doing — calorie stuff,” Counihan told the publication. “I’ll take it off and charge it so that I can wear it during the day…I wear it to bed as well — keep track of sleep too,” he added.

But the past October, the smartwatch alerted him about increased breathing. “I got an alert back in October that my breathing was elevated. So basically you have a certain number of breaths per minute, basically said I went from 14 to 17 or 18,” Counihan said.

Thinking that the watch had flagged a minor illness, he went home and rested. “My wife had me make a phone call to my son and he suggested I go to the outpatient care, get it looked at, which is what I did. And they just did an X-ray. And they gave me some meds for bronchitis at the time.”

But, the watch alerted him again, indicating that something is off.

“My blood oxygen—which is normally mid-90s, which is what is supposed to be, kind of 95 and up—started to get out to the mid-80s. It was 10 o’clock at night. My wife was very concerned. My son was very concerned. I was like ‘I just want to go to bed. I’m tired…and they were both like ‘No, you’ve got to get to the ER,” Counihan said.

He then underwent some scans and found blood clots over the lungs. Dr. Lucy Franjic, an emergency medical physician at Cleveland Clinic, said “Blood clots actually can become a life-threatening condition if they’re not caught early enough,” she said.

“What the doctor said as a follow-up was it if I hadn’t gone in, he said 60% of the people that have this condition at that stage—if I gone to bed, I may not have woken up the next morning,” Counihan said.