The results of the Apple Heart Study, were presented this morning at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions amid intense media scrutiny. The AHS is a “prospective, single arm pragmatic study” which had the primary objective of measuring the proportion of participants with an irregular pulse detected by the Apple Watch who turn out to have atrial fibrillation on subsequent ambulatory ECG patch monitoring.
I and over 400,000 other Apple Watch owners participated in the AH study by downloading the Apple Heart Study app and self-verifying our eligibility.
My assessment is that we have learned little to nothing from the AHS that we didn’t already know. I’m also concerned that many patients suffered anxiety or unnecessary testing after being referred to urgent care centers, emergency departments, cardiologists or primary care providers and the results of these inappropriate referrals may never be determined.
Here is the study in a nutshell:
- Participants enrolled by submitting information using the iPhone Heart Study app and none of their isubmitted nformation was verified.
- An irregular pulse notification was issued to 0.5% of participants who were then contacted and asked to participate in a Telehealth visit with a doctor (who we will call Dr. Appleseed)
- Only 945 of the 2161 who received a pulse notification participated in the first study visit.
Interestingly, Dr. Appleseed was empowered to send participants to the ER if they had symptoms (chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting/losing consciousness) It is not clear how many were sent to the ER and what their outcomes were but this flow diagram shows that 20 were excluded from further testing due to “emergent symptoms.”
- Another 174 participants were excluded after finding out at the first visit that they had a history of afib or aflutter and 90 due to current anticoagulant use (both of these factors were exclusion criteria which gives us an idea of how accurate the information was at the time of participant entry.)
- After all these exclusions only 658 ECG monitor patches were shipped to the participants of which only 450 were returned and analyzed.
- This means of the original 2161 participants who were notified of pulse irregularity, the study only reports data on 450 or 21%. Such a low rate of participation makes any conclusions from the study suspect.
- Of the 450 ECG patches analyzed only 34% were classified as having afib. Only 25% of this afib lasted longer than 24 hours.
- After the patch data was analyzed, patients had a second Telehealth visit with Dr. Appleseed who reviewed the findings with the patient. Per the initial published description of the methods of the AHS (see here) Dr. Appleseed would tell the participant to head to the ER if certain abnormalities were found on the ECG.
Per the study description (apple heart study), Dr. Appleseed recommended a visit to the PCP for “AF or any other arrhythmia” detected by the patch:”
“If AF or any other arrhythmias have been detected in reviewing the ambulatory ECG monitor data, or if there are other non-urgent symptom identified by the study physician during the video visit that may need further clinical evaluation, the Study Telehealth Provider directs the participant to his or her primary health care provider”
At this point it seems likely that a lot of participants were instructed to go see their PCPs. Because as someone who looks at a lot of 2 week ambulatory ECG recordings I know that is the rare recording that does not show “other arrhythmias.”
Even more distressing is the call that participants would have received based on “the initial technical read:” I’m presuming this “technical read” was by a technician and not by a cardiologist. In my experience, many initial reads from long term monitors are inaccurate.
“If the initial technical read identifies abnormalities that require urgent attention (ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation, high-degree heart block, long pauses, or sustained and very rapid ventricular rates), then the participant is contacted immediately and directed to local emergency care or advised how to seek local emergency care.”
I wonder how many ERs had AHS participants show up saying they had been told they had a life-threatening arrhythmia? How much down stream testing with possible invasive, life-threatening procedures such as cardiac catheterization were performed in response to these notifications?
Overall, these findings add nothing to previous studies using wearable PPG technology and they certainly don’t leave me with any confidence that the Apple Watch is accurately automatically detecting atrial fibrillation.
Was more harm than good done by the Apple Heart Study?
We will never know. The strength of this study, the large number of easily recruited participants is also its Achilles heel. We don’t know that any information about the participants is correct and we don’t have any validated follow up of the outcomes. In particular, I’m concerned that we don’t know what happened to all of these individuals who were sent to various health care providers thinking there might be something seriously wrong.
Perhaps Apple and Stanford need to review the first dictum of medicine: Primum Non Nocere, First Do No Harm.
Tachogramophobically Yours,
-ACP
2 thoughts on “Apple Heart Study: Despite The Ballyhoo, No Benefits Demonstrated, Harms Not Measured”
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I have the Kardia as does my daughter ( who has wpw- 2 ablations later mostly symptom free ). I have horrible pvcs so many that I was diagnosed with ventricular bigeminy by the Kardia cardiologist. I have been plagued by pvcs all my adult life , now 53, but these feel different , harder, way more frequent. I feel lightheaded and just a general feeling of weakness . One thing I know for sure . These have to stop and I must get relief !