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239 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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lukko ◴[] No.36214465[source]
I definitely felt Mondays on-call were much busier in the hospital. I always thought this could be due to patients spending weekends with family, not wanting to cause a fuss and maybe ignoring symptoms of cardiac chest pain until it evolves into a serious heart attack (STEMI). Also, they may be waiting to see their GP on Monday morning and then get referred to hospital (although less likely with STEMIs).

I also remember the time between Christmas and New Year being very busy - I thought for a similar reason - people understandably just don't want to be in hospital for Christmas.

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CoastalCoder ◴[] No.36214579[source]
I wonder if modern smartphones lay the groundwork for people knowing they're on the cusp of a heart attack.

E.g., using sensors that are cheap, and are less invasive than EKG electrodes. Kinda like the way Apple watches can now continuously monitor stuff

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1. lukko ◴[] No.36214692[source]
Yep, it will be interesting to see – Apple Watch can already monitor for atrial fibrillation: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212214. Though, it looks like the patient must already have a diagnosis from a doctor. So rather than diagnosing, it's sort of an AF tracker - which is useful as AF can come and go.

The problem obviously with heart attacks is the implications of false negatives and positives are huge, and the tracing from a watch would be less reliable than the gold-standard ECG / EKG.