Pregnant women have been using their smart devices like Apple watches to catch conditions like myocarditis and placental abruption.
Doctors say it’s a growing trend where patients are coming into appointments and sharing data like heart rate, body temperature, and sleep hours — taken from smartphones, rings, or watches and helping in their own diagnosis.
For Rachel Manalo, her Apple watch took an EKG she says helped save her and her baby’s life.
During her pregnancy in early 2022 she felt her heart race on and off. She was only 18 weeks pregnant and wasn’t due for a while. When it began happening more often, she knew it couldn’t be good.
Manalo knows more about heart health than most people. She is a pediatric cardiologist who treats kids with heart conditions.
“I would feel tired, short of breath. I remember sitting down with the patient and giving a diagnosis. And I felt dizzy just sitting in my chair like I was about to faint,” she said.
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At 33 weeks pregnant, her rapid beats wouldn’t stop. Concerned, she looked down to her wrist to take an EKG, or electrocardiogram. It measures the electrical activity of the heart.
“I click the EKG function on my watch. And then you place your finger on the crown and lay your arm still on the table. And it takes a recording for 30 seconds,” she showed Scripps News.
Her EKG at that time showed “inconclusive,” which should prompt a patient to ask their doctor, she says.
Instead of the normal 60-100 beats a minute, her heart rate was at 150 for more than 40 minutes. Manalo had something called ventricular tachycardia. The lower part of her heart wasn’t working as well, and not enough oxygen was getting into the blood. Plus, her heart was already working overtime, pumping twice the blood volume for her and her baby.
She rushed to UCLA in Los Angeles, where she saw maternal and fetal medicine specialist Dr. Tina Nguyen.
"That type of heart issue, if not taken care of, can lead to a heart attack. And then you add on that she was pregnant,” Dr. Nguyen explains. “We talked about everything. I said ‘so when did you start noticing this irregular heart rate, you know, when did you have symptoms’ And she said, 'you know, my Apple Watch told me.'”
Nguyen, also a specialist in informatics, where information impacts the human experience. In this case, the patient experience.
“I want all the data," she said. "I want, you know, the patients to all wear Fitbits, all wear OURA rings and bring me all that information. Just having someone's blood pressure when they're at home and their heart rate can really change their pregnancy from the first visit forward. So that information is like gold to me.”
Nguyen does stress that patients should not try to interpret their own health data from their devices on their own, especially if they don’t have a medical background.
“Raw data is not a diagnosis, right? It's just symptoms," she said. "So you have symptoms. You have concerns. Yes. You can Google, you can web MD, but you still have that symptom. You still need the human touch, you know, and hopefully that's your doctor to kind of figure out what's going on."
For Manalo’s case, she’d end up having an emergency C section at 34 weeks.
“I told her (Dr. Nguyen), please, no C-section. But at that point, it was too late. My heart will not be able to handle a vaginal delivery,” she recalled.
“We had a very multidisciplinary, educated, decision with cardiology, high risk obstetrics, anesthesia and cardiac anesthesia. So there were a lot of teams involved." Nguyen said. “It actually was pretty straightforward. I like things to be boring. So I like to say I thought it was great — was very boring and very minimal blood loss. The baby came out. She was able to stay with the baby. We also closed her uterus in such a way that for her next, when she's ready, if she wants to have a vaginal delivery, she can.”
“At that point, it's just whatever is the best choice for me and the baby so we can go home safe,” Manalo said.
Her daughter Samantha was born four pounds, five ounces, mom says. Manalo would be on medication after her pregnancy to control her heart problem.
She then went on to have a minor surgery to treat the problem. Samantha is now two and mom says her daughter is joyful and strong willed. It’s a personality mom may have to contend with down the road, years later, when she may ask for her own smartphone or smart watch.
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