Smartwatches could help detect heart failure, new study shows

At least 26 million people worldwide have congestive heart failure, and heart failure itself is the leading cause of death globally.

Congestive heart failure doesn't happen suddenly, and if you don't know the symptoms, you may not know you have it. Here's what you should look for and what else might soon be looking for you.

Congestive heart failure can completely change someone's life. On a day-to-day basis, it reduces patients' capabilities to do their everyday work.

Symptoms include chest pain, shortness of breath, weight gain, and a persistent cough or wheezing. In the extreme forms, people can't walk 10 yards.

Currently, the only ways to detect congestive heart failure are blood tests, X-rays, stress tests, CT scans, or echo or electrocardiograms, also known as ECGs.

But a study from the Heart Rhythm Society has found a possible new method: your smartwatch. When you're purchasing the watches, you want to make sure that the device can record ECGs. Just utilizing the information found in ECGs, the researchers had a 90% success rate in identifying congestive heart failure.

This opens the door to capturing the same information on your watch instead of having to go to the doctor's office, which allows doctors to act much sooner. That way, instead of spending time diagnosing, doctors can get right to treatment.

"There's a lot of valuable health information that these wearable devices are collecting," said Dr. McKillop.

Smartwatches have already been proven to detect atrial fibrillation, but Dr. McKillop stresses that the information captured by the watch should be interpreted by a medical professional.

To see if your smartwatch can capture ECGs, look at the watch features on the manufacturer's website or ask the seller.