At a routine physical, Marylin Spunar was shocked to hear that she had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation at 51 years old, an irregular heart rhythm that if left untreated can lead to a stroke. At the appointment, her doctor told her about a feature on her Apple Watch that could monitor her heart rate. “I turned it on and sure enough, I get the alert like five or six times a day because with Afib it’s constant.
It sort of gets annoying,” Spunar said. Just 10 months after seeing a cardiologist and receiving treatment, an alert on her watch let her know that the irregular heart rate was back. “If I did not have that watch.
I wouldn’t know. I really wouldn’t,” she said. “Because of the watch, I feel and my doctors feel confident that I’m going to know when it happens.
” Symptoms for atrial fibrillation, commonly known as Afib, include fatigue, heart palpitations, trouble breathing and dizziness. Afib is one of the most common arrhythmias. Risk factors for Afib include high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and obesity .
Most people diagnosed with Afib are in their 50s or 60s, but according to Dr. Yasser Rodriguez, an electrophysiologist at Cleveland Clinic Weston, diagnoses for Afib are increasing — and the patients are getting younger. “With the increasing obesity epidemic, we’re seeing a lot more sleep apnea and obesity in younger people, which is shifting the patients closer to their 50s,” Rodriguez said.
Dr. Pedro Martinez-Clark, medical.
