The New York Times has published an article regarding the Apple Watch 5's capability to detect atrial fibrillation. The link to the article is below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/upshot/apple-watch-atrial-fibrillation.html?te=1&nl=personal-tech&emc=edit_ct_20191226?campaign_id=38&instance_id=14801&segment_id=19884&user_id=d7e858ffd01b131c28733046812ca088®i_id=6759438320191226
The title and the subtitle of the article provide a good summary of what the author (Aaron E. Carroll) found:
"The Watch Is Smart, but It Can’t Replace Your Doctor
Apple has been advertising its watch’s ability to detect atrial fibrillation. The reality doesn’t quite live up to the promise."
With reference to my article, the Times article provides more detail on the trial that Apple ran to test the effectiveness of the Apple Watch's ability to detect atrial fibrillation. That provide interesting and enlightening, and clarified some of the issues I found with how the study was reported for both the procedure and the results. In addition, the author and I concur regarding the Apple Watch's extremely high reported rate of false positives for atrial fibrillation. I find this quite interesting when you consider that screening for atrial fibrillation can be as simple as taking the patient's pulse.
"Of the 450 participants [these are study participants where the Apple Watch had detected atrial fibrillation] who returned patches , atrial fibrillation was confirmed in 34 percent, or 153 people.
...
Many news outlets reporting on the study mentioned a topline result: a “positive predictive value” of 84 percent. That statistic refers to the chance that someone actually has the condition if he or she gets a positive test result.
But this result wasn’t calculated from any of the numbers above. It specifically refers to the subset of patients who had an irregular pulse notification while wearing their confirmatory patch. That’s a very small minority of participants. Of the 86 who got a notification while wearing a patch, 72 had confirmed evidence of atrial fibrillation. (Dividing 72 by 86 yields 0.84, which is how you get a positive predictive value of 84 percent.)
Positive predictive values, although useful when talking to patients, are not always a good measure of a test’s effectiveness. When you test a device on a group where everyone has a disease, for instance, all positive results are correct."
...
There are positive messages from this study. There’s potential to use commercial devices to monitor and assess people outside of the clinical setting, and there’s clearly an appetite for it as well. But for now and based on these results, while there may be reasons to own an Apple Watch, using it as a widespread screen for atrial fibrillation probably isn’t one."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/upshot/apple-watch-atrial-fibrillation.html?te=1&nl=personal-tech&emc=edit_ct_20191226?campaign_id=38&instance_id=14801&segment_id=19884&user_id=d7e858ffd01b131c28733046812ca088®i_id=6759438320191226
The title and the subtitle of the article provide a good summary of what the author (Aaron E. Carroll) found:
"The Watch Is Smart, but It Can’t Replace Your Doctor
Apple has been advertising its watch’s ability to detect atrial fibrillation. The reality doesn’t quite live up to the promise."
With reference to my article, the Times article provides more detail on the trial that Apple ran to test the effectiveness of the Apple Watch's ability to detect atrial fibrillation. That provide interesting and enlightening, and clarified some of the issues I found with how the study was reported for both the procedure and the results. In addition, the author and I concur regarding the Apple Watch's extremely high reported rate of false positives for atrial fibrillation. I find this quite interesting when you consider that screening for atrial fibrillation can be as simple as taking the patient's pulse.
Here are a few quotes from the article:
"Of the 450 participants [these are study participants where the Apple Watch had detected atrial fibrillation] who returned patches , atrial fibrillation was confirmed in 34 percent, or 153 people.
...
Many news outlets reporting on the study mentioned a topline result: a “positive predictive value” of 84 percent. That statistic refers to the chance that someone actually has the condition if he or she gets a positive test result.
But this result wasn’t calculated from any of the numbers above. It specifically refers to the subset of patients who had an irregular pulse notification while wearing their confirmatory patch. That’s a very small minority of participants. Of the 86 who got a notification while wearing a patch, 72 had confirmed evidence of atrial fibrillation. (Dividing 72 by 86 yields 0.84, which is how you get a positive predictive value of 84 percent.)
Positive predictive values, although useful when talking to patients, are not always a good measure of a test’s effectiveness. When you test a device on a group where everyone has a disease, for instance, all positive results are correct."
...
There are positive messages from this study. There’s potential to use commercial devices to monitor and assess people outside of the clinical setting, and there’s clearly an appetite for it as well. But for now and based on these results, while there may be reasons to own an Apple Watch, using it as a widespread screen for atrial fibrillation probably isn’t one."
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