Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

Re:Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Wat... by rootusrootus on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @07:19PM (#21065746)

Differentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.

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Re:Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Wat... by btach on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @01:12AM (#21067809)

Sometimes the rhythm may degrade into a ventricular rhythm, like v-tach then into v-fib if not treated. A heart can still pump in v-tach, albeit very inefficiently, but in v-fib, no blood is pumped. On the other hand, taking the watch off results in no signal input which is different than what you would see on the monitor for asystole.

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Re:Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Wat... by manicdee on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @07:04AM (#21069535)

Apart from the immediate “flatline” the watch also detects that it is not proximate to the skin. As soon as you take it off the watch disables things like ApplePay. It knows when it being/has been taken off.

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Re:Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Wat... by throwaway8689 on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @01:08AM (#21067781)

I'd guess taking the watch off would produce a classic flat line. A heart in arrest which is in the process of dying will produce irregular electrical output.

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