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Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

reuters.com

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Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#21

Post by ColanR »

eriktrautman wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Like with any medical test: if you do more tests you will find more incidence. The same thing happened with various forms of cancer screening. If we were to test everybody for everything very few people would be found to be 100% and a lot of unnecessary procedures would be the result. Given the obesity problem this result should not be a surprising finding anyway.

Are you advocating that we shouldn't bother testing instead? I'd imagine that many people would be quite interested in knowing the ways they're not 100% that might actually kill them... like cancer.

It's a question of false positives and false negatives. Most medical tests have a decent percentage of both.

> Screening test results may appear to be abnormal even though no cancer is present. A false-positive test result (one that shows there is cancer when there really isn't) can cause anxiety and is usually followed by more tests (such as biopsy), which also have risks. [1]

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/types/colorectal/patient/colorectal-s...

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#22

Post by aboutruby »

I saw a few posts on Reddit about how the Apple Watch basically saved people's life:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/a40qm5/heading_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/9zrdq5/how_an_a...

I'm sure there is a lot more.

(Also all the people losing weight)

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#24

Post by EliRivers »

eriktrautman wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Like with any medical test: if you do more tests you will find more incidence. The same thing happened with various forms of cancer screening. If we were to test everybody for everything very few people would be found to be 100% and a lot of unnecessary procedures would be the result. Given the obesity problem this result should not be a surprising finding anyway.

Are you advocating that we shouldn't bother testing instead? I'd imagine that many people would be quite interested in knowing the ways they're not 100% that might actually kill them... like cancer.

If you simply go looking, you'll find a lot of abnormalities associated with various conditions that turn out to be false positives and, for that person, fairly normal.

Here's a piece on the subject; http://www.journalgazette.net/features/20180604/anomalies-in...

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#25

Post by pfranz »

eriktrautman wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Like with any medical test: if you do more tests you will find more incidence. The same thing happened with various forms of cancer screening. If we were to test everybody for everything very few people would be found to be 100% and a lot of unnecessary procedures would be the result. Given the obesity problem this result should not be a surprising finding anyway.

Are you advocating that we shouldn't bother testing instead? I'd imagine that many people would be quite interested in knowing the ways they're not 100% that might actually kill them... like cancer.

Nothing specific to this article, but this comes up often in medicine. Sure, you can pay to run more tests, find some things earlier (along with some false positives), but the outcomes and treatment aren't any different than if you waited for more obvious symptoms and could take a more accurate test.

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#26

Post by ddebernardy »

If there are any MDs around, I'd be curious to know if there's some kind of data-driven baseline about there being a regular heart beat to begin with, or if there being one is an underlying assumption that's taken for granted.

(Either way, kudos to Apple for contributing to health science.)

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#27

Post by [deleted] »

aboutruby wrote: post #22

I saw a few posts on Reddit about how the Apple Watch basically saved people's life: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/a40qm5/heading_... https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/9zrdq5/how_an_a... I'm sure there is a lot more. (Also all the people losing weight)

[deleted]

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#28

Post by arrrg »

eriktrautman wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Like with any medical test: if you do more tests you will find more incidence. The same thing happened with various forms of cancer screening. If we were to test everybody for everything very few people would be found to be 100% and a lot of unnecessary procedures would be the result. Given the obesity problem this result should not be a surprising finding anyway.

Are you advocating that we shouldn't bother testing instead? I'd imagine that many people would be quite interested in knowing the ways they're not 100% that might actually kill them... like cancer.

Just imagine all the stress and suffering caused by the misdiagnosis and unnecessary visits to the doctor and unnecessary tests and imagine that on a grand scale (to say nothing of wasted resources).

I’m not saying that to automatically disqualify and increase in the availability of testing – but it does have to be implemented with the proper care and caution.

Re: Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

#29

Post by MereInterest »

melling wrote: post #23

In the future everyone will wear a smartwatch. My thesis was health and safety. https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...

When tech companies are subject to the same level of data protection as health care providers, complete with with HIPAA penalties for failure, then I might trust them with medical data.
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