Fitness gizmo saves life of heart patient

A MAN’S life may have been saved because he was wearing a fitness tracking device. The 42-year-old suffered a seizure after he missed a dose of medicine and was admitted to hospital with a fast, irregular heartbeat.

However, medical staff did not know whether the condition – known as atrial fibrillation – was something from which he suffered before or was a new problem. That would have meant them taking a gamble on how to treat the unnamed patient.

Using an electric shock to reset his heart rate could have stopped him suffering a stroke – if the irregularity had been brought on by the seizure. But the procedure could trigger a stroke in someone with a chronic heart condition. Luckily he wore a Fitbit.

Such tracking devices, pictured, measure heart rate, calorie intake, distance covered and other fitness data, sending the information to a mobile phone app.

In what is believed to be a world first, US doctors at the hospital in New Jersey were able to get the information they needed from the wristband, the Annals of Emergency Medicine reports. They could see his heart was normally steady and had suddenly raced at up to 160 beats per minute before the seizure, so applied electric shocks to reset his heart rate to normal.