foundafreeusername t1_itex1e5 wrote
Reply to comment by xdaemonisx in Apple Watch heart rate notifications helped 12-year-old girl discover and treat cancer. by SUPRVLLAN
Interesting. A lot of cardiologists don't seem to be a fan of this technology. Supposedly because it has a lot of false positives sending people to the doctor that don't have any issues.
Maybe it improved by now
xdaemonisx t1_itey631 wrote
He told me it was a lot less expensive than the Zio patch or Holter monitor and good enough to use to see if my SVT gets worse. When I had to wear those devices for 3 weeks (first the Holter monitor, then they switched to the Zio patch because it was more discreet) it was like, $1,500 I had to pay. The watch was only $300 and I can show him at my appointments. The watch could not diagnose me, and I have no idea what I’m looking for, but it seems to be worth it.
[deleted] t1_itfsdh6 wrote
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mixmastakooz t1_itf0s0n wrote
My ER doctor friend likes them: she’d rather have a false positive than someone missing out on treatment but more often than not, it’s been something actionable.
moofunk t1_itfz5tw wrote
> Supposedly because it has a lot of false positives sending people to the doctor that don't have any issues.
Worse than that, it shows an actual issue of sorts, but puts the doctor in a position for whether treatment should be done or not, because the patient may be better off with no treatment, because they are young and otherwise healthy.
The patient ends up demanding treatment (surgery) and ends up with a worse quality of life than before, or in very unfortunate cases, end up dying from complications.
What the watch is really doing, is gather a lot of data from mostly healthy, younger people, that don't suffer heart issues that require treatment, i.e. people that such data is normally not gathered data from, because they never needed to.
I don't think we can see the true benefit of the watch until 25 years from now, when we can start mapping out how the heart and cardiovascular system deteriorates as you age and what causes increased deterioration.
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