Wearable devices can help track your cardiovascular health
Wearable technology isn’t just about checking text messages and counting steps anymore. Whether an Apple watch, an Oura Ring, or another wearable, smart devices can help improve your heart health.
“Wearable technology can be worn by patients of all ages and has fundamentally changed how we detect heart rhythm disorders. For the first time ever, millions of people are carrying essentially a heart rhythm monitor on them every day, and for many, it’s for large swaths of the day,” says Dr. Jeffrey Senfield, a cardiac electrophysiologist with Bon Secours Upstate Cardiology.
“We can identify some arrhythmias earlier than ever before,” he says of smartwatches’ single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) features. They record the timing and electrical signals of your heartbeat and flag irregular rhythms.
“The most important and biggest one,” he says, is atrial fibrillation (AFib), which affects 8 to 10 million Americans and 30 million people globally. Most are older patients.
While there’s no cure for AFib, effective treatments—heart rate-controlling medications, blood thinners, and ablations—can manage its symptoms, including shortness of breath, heart palpitations, lightheadedness, and chest pain, and lower the increased stroke risk that accompanies the disease.
Beyond detecting arrhythmias, smart devices also can measure heart rate and variability, blood oxygen levels, arterial health, and blood pressure. This is done with photoplethysmography (PPG) technology, which shines green LED lights onto your skin to track the changes in light absorption as blood pulses through your veins.
“We’ve gone from patients trying to describe symptoms from memory to bringing us an actual recorded event that we can use to help diagnose and treat a problem,” Senfield says, adding that some devices also have AI detection assistance and medical record entry capabilities that allow “us to better understand what the device sees and what the patient feels.”
While there are advantages to health wearables, Senfield says it’s important to understand that they come with limitations. That includes occasionally delivering “false positives,” or false alerts of AFib, which can cause increased anxiety.
“Most of these devices are intentionally designed to be sensitive. They’re not 100 percent perfect, but they allow for a better understanding of what you’re going through. And they also keep people engaged with their own health,” he says, adding that following usage instructions and wearing devices correctly—by keeping them in close contact with your skin—will decrease the likelihood of getting a false reading.
You should contact your doctor or a cardiologist if your wearable detects an abnormal rhythm or other concerning data. “I like to use this data as the beginning of the conversation,” Senfield says, adding that it’s best to consider it in the context of symptoms, medical history, and additional testing.
Senfield and other Bon Secours Upstate Cardiology providers are accepting new adult cardiac patients. You can learn more about the practice’s commitment to delivering high quality, comprehensive care by visiting bonsecours.com/locations/specialty-locations/heart-care-cardiology/upstate-cardiology-greenville.
