Smartwatches can pick up abnormal heart rhythms in kids, study finds

by Stanford University Medical Center

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Smartwatches can help physicians detect and diagnose irregular heart rhythms in children, according to a new study from the Stanford School of Medicine.

The finding comes from a survey of electronic medical records for pediatric cardiology patients receiving care at Stanford Medicine Children's Health. The study will publish online Dec. 13 in Communications Medicine.

Over a four-year period, patients' medical records mentioned "Apple Watch" 145 times. Among patients whose medical records mentioned the smartwatch, 41 had abnormal heart rhythms confirmed by traditional diagnostic methods; of these, 29 children had their arrythmias diagnosed for the first time.

"I was surprised by how often our standard monitoring didn't pick up arrythmias and thewatch did," said senior study author Scott Ceresnak, MD, professor of pediatrics. Ceresnak is a pediatric cardiologist who treats patients at Stanford Medicine. "It's awesome to see that newer technology can really make a difference in how we're able to care for patients."

The study's lead author is Aydin Zahedivash, MD, a clinical instructor in pediatrics.

Most of the abnormal rhythms detected were not life-threatening, Ceresnak said. However, he added that the arrythmias detected can cause distressing symptoms such as a racing heartbeat, dizziness and fainting.

Skipping a beat, sometimes

Doctors face two challenges in diagnosing children's cardiac arrythmias, or heart rhythm abnormalities.

The first is that cardiac diagnostic devices, though they have improved in recent years, still aren't ideal for kids. Ten to 20 years ago, a child had to wear, for 24 to 48 hours, a Holter monitor consisting of a device about the size of a smartphone attached by wires to five electrodes that were adhered to the child's chest. Patients can now wear event monitors—in the form of a single sticker placed on the chest—for a few weeks. Although the event monitors are more comfortable and can be worn longer than a Holter monitor, they sometimes fall off early or cause problems such as skin irritation from adhesives.

The second challenge is that even a few weeks of continuous monitoring may not capture the heart's erratic behavior, as children experience arrythmias unpredictably. Kids may go months between episodes, making it tricky for their doctors to determine what's going on.

Connor Heinz and his family faced both challenges when he experienced periods of a racing heartbeat starting at age 12: An adhesive monitor was too irritating, and he was having irregular heart rhythms only once every few months. Ceresnak thought he knew what was causing the racing rhythms, but he wanted confirmation. He suggested that Connor and his mom, Amy Heinz, could try using Amy's smartwatch to record the rhythm the next time Connor's heart began racing.

Using smartwatches for measuring children's heart rhythms is limited by the fact that existing smartwatch algorithms that detect heart problems have not been optimized for kids. Children have faster heartbeats than adults; they also tend to experience different types of abnormal rhythms than do adults who have cardiac arrythmias.

The paper showed that the smartwatches appear to help detect arrhythmias in kids, suggesting that it would be useful to design versions of the smartwatch algorithms based on real-world heart rhythm data from children.

More information: Aydin Zahedivash et al, Utility of smart watches for identifying arrhythmias in children, Communications Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43856-023-00392-9 , www.nature.com/articles/s43856-023-00392-9

Journal information: Communications Medicine 

Provided by Stanford University Medical Center