Suffering from epilepsy since 2018 and without much success with the treatment, the British Elaine Thompson, 59, may have been saved by an alert made by her smartwatch. The woman started using the Apple Watch in February 2022 at her daughter’s suggestion – the goal was to keep up with the typical seizures of the disease, but the watch ended up pointing to another serious health issue.
In April, Elaine received a notification from the device warning that she had an irregular heart rhythm and should see a doctor urgently. The British woman went to the specialist, did a series of tests, but no heart problem was found. To be sure, she got in line with the health system to wear a heart monitor that would record her heartbeats over a period of time.
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The device detected that she had no heartbeat for 19 seconds while she slept. Elaine was diagnosed with atrioventricular block, a type of serious heart arrhythmia that affects the heart’s pumping ability because of a disturbance in the heart’s electrical system. Some of the main symptoms are tiredness, nausea and fainting.
Heart blocks are graded on a scale of one to three and, in some cases, can be life-threatening. Elaine fears that she “would have been dead” if the watch had not detected the abnormality.
The disorder can develop throughout life, but some patients are born with the condition. The most common causes of blockage are:
- Idiopathic fibrosis and conduction system sclerosis (about half of patients);
- Ischemic heart disease;
- Use of some drugs (beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, digoxin and amiodarone, for example);
- Increased vagal tone;
- Valvulopatia;
- Congenital, genetic or other heart diseases.
Diagnosis for the block is usually performed by electrocardiogram (ECG). Symptoms and treatment depend on the degree of the problem — in Elaine’s case, it was necessary to implement a pacemaker to control her heartbeat.
“The doctors said I needed a pacemaker, and we already scheduled the surgery for the next day. I’ll use it for the rest of my life, but it’s a relief to know that I tried to find out what the problem was — if I hadn’t gone to the doctor, I could have been dead”, she says, in an interview with jornal The Sun.
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