Fitbit likely helped doctors save a man’s life

When a 42-year-man arrived in a Camden, N.J. emergency room with an irregular heartbeat recently, physicians were unsure whether they could use a defibrillator to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm.

Defibrillators can cause blood clots to be released if they caused the irregular heart rate, but can stop clots from forming by producing a normal rhythm.

Doctors noticed the patient, who had a history of seizures, was wearing a Fitbit that tracked his pulse rate and recorded it through a smartphone application. So they used the wearable to determine that irregular heart beat coincided with a grand mal seizure that had been witnessed three hours earlier.

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