Apple Watch saves woman's life by detecting deadly blood clot in her lungs: 'I’m very lucky'

Smart watches are a great way to monitor heart rate and it seems that they are even great at saving lives. A 29-year-old Cincinnati woman is one of many people thanking her Apple watch for saving her life. Kimmie Watkins wasn't feeling well one day, so she decided to sleep it off. She soon received an alert that said something was wrong. Her Apple Watch woke her up because her heart rate had spiked to 178 beats per minute. That's comparable to that of an athlete at peak performance.

Earlier that day she assumed she was feeling lightheaded and dizzy because she hadn't eaten much. She didn't take it too seriously because she didn't have a history of heart problems and just decided to sleep it off. "I was asleep for about an hour and a half before my watch woke me up with this alarm that said that my heart rate had been too high for too long," she told WKRC. "So for over 10 minutes, it was too high."

Later she found out she had a serious medical condition: a blood clot in her lungs. Her doctors diagnosed her the next day with a pulmonary embolism, which happens when a blood clot gets stuck in an artery in the lung and blocks blood flow to part of the lung. Dr. Richard Becker, a cardiologist at the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine, said people who have one have a 50 percent chance of survival. "A saddle pulmonary embolism is the most severe and life-threatening of all, because it's a blood clot that saddles both the blood vessel to the right lung and to the left lung," Dr. Becker said.

The Apple watch helped because it was able to measure heart rate while the wearer is sleeping. Thanks to the alert from her watch, Watkins went to the doctor right on time and also learned she has a clotting disorder that she never knew about. “I’m very lucky, and if my sleep hadn’t been disturbed, my partner would have found me asleep on the couch or not really asleep,” Watkins said.

She hopes her story might help people take advantage of today's technological advances and choose devices that could potentially save a life. "It might be seen as staying too connected or something, but I think it can be helpful in a health sense, and not just in a connect to people sense," Watkins said.

Another story of how a smartwatch helped save a life came from New Hampshire when a man fell through a frozen pond. William Rogers fell through the ice while skating on a frozen pond. He started suffering hypothermia after ten minutes of struggling. That's when he thought about his Apple Watch and was able to call 911. Within five minutes, firefighters helped rescue Rogers.

"Told them that I probably had 10 minutes before I was not going to be able to respond anymore," Rogers told WABC.