Heart attacks are sudden and sometimes nothing could save you. My mother is a medical professional, and she told me the story about a doctor in her hospital: one morning he realized he was about to have a heart attack, called emergency services himself and left the door open; he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived, five to ten minutes later.

There was a legendary cardiologist at my medical school who predicted his own demise, took a Holter monitor home with him one night, wired himself up, went to sleep, never woke up, and left his colleagues with the 12-lead trace of his death.

It is a reference to the number of electrodes attached to the monitor. A 12 lead setup can provide a much more detailed signal and thus be used in different diagnostics than a lower lead obtained trace.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538203/

I find this confusing. If he was so sure of his imminent death why not do the same thing in a hospital room where you had a chance of survival.

Unless he had this sense multiple times and was finally right this time...

He may have been choosing quality over quantity.

Thinking of deaths of people I've known; dying at home in bed seems preferable to most.

"Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande is an excellent book on this subject.

Doctors know how awful dying in a hospital can be, and once you're there they won't let you change your mind.

Reminds me of this story

https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-10/he-documented-his-own...

> the 12-lead trace of his death

What does this mean?

A 12-lead ECG report/graph/whatever it's called. 12 wires collecting data (versus eg the Apple Watch implementation which is equivalent to a 1-lead ECG)

I wouldn't be to sure the Apple watch is even comparable to 1-lead ECG, simply due to the difference of how ECG is attached to you and how the Apple watch is.

Through this doesn't mean the Apple watch can't be a useful addition, just don't rely on it.

I would imagine it is possible the sensor in an Apple watch is more sophisticated than a single ecg lead.

12 lead ECG is just a technology. There could be other techniques. However, the Apple Watch might be comparable to higher number of leads but never be identical to the number of leads.

Except, when you wear additional bracelets at your both legs, the other hand, both shoulders and another 6 on your chest. Then yes ;). And consider the continuous cyborgization of our society, that is not that far away.

The 12 lead ECG is about detecting the electrical impulses of heart beats from different angles of your bodies.

If you found a technology to detect these mV values from a meter away ... tell me ;) We will be rich ;)

You can do only so much with a single signal.

There's a reason ECG probes are attached to multiple points on the body, and you can infer quite a bit of info from just comparing multiple signals alone, including if you have your heart flipped, for some reason. :D You'll not get that from your watch.

Apple state that it is equivalent to a 1-lead ECG.

12 wires attached to his torso, recording all the electrical impulses from various points, tracing out a graph.

They call this an electrocardiogram (ECG) but the one I had for a medical didn't have 12 leads just 5 or 7 I think.

A 12 lead is actually 10 wires (the "leads" are then comprised of various combinations of those wires).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einthoven%27s_triangle

Number of wires connected to points on his body for ECG he recorded on himself.

Some heart attacks kill faster than others. They are not all sudden. My friend, a doctor, had a heart attack and decided to go to the second nearest hospital because it had a better reputation than the nearest. He's still alive today.

Sure, I probably should have moved “sometimes” before “sudden”.

My uncle died in the waiting room of his cardiologist's office, waiting for his check-up

It doesn't just detect arrhythmia -- it also detects if you have fallen and are not moving (and will automatically call emergency services after some duration, if configured as such). More details at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944 if you're interested to know more.