Tim Cook Shares Lifesaving Apple Watch Story After Teen Goes Into Kidney Failure
A recent study claimed that the Apple Watch can detect abnormal heart rhythms with 97 percent accuracy, and today Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a new story in which the company's wearable device did just that, saving someone's life in the process.
Speaking with Tampa, Florida's ABC affiliate WFTS, 18-year-old Deanna Recktenwald said that one day her Apple Watch warned her that her resting heart rate hit 190 beats per minute. After staff at a walk-in clinic confirmed a similar heart rate, Deanna was sent to the emergency room where doctors found that she was in kidney failure.

Deanna's parents gifted her the Apple Watch for Christmas last year, with the family now thankful for its ability to alert them to a condition that might have otherwise continued to go unnoticed. "Now that we have some answers to why this is happening we can prevent something major from happening down the road," said Deanna.
Deanna's mother Stacey wrote to Apple, explaining what happened and thanking the company for the Apple Watch.
"After about an hour the blood work came back and the doctors reviewed the results and told us that Deanna was in Kidney Failure. Her kidneys were only functioning at 20%. She had no symptoms of any kidney issues or any other medical issues. If it wasn't for her Apple watch alarming her about her HR we wouldn't have discovered her kidney issue.
I honestly feel that your Apple Watch has saved my daughter's life. She is heading off for college in August and her condition may have been overlooked and if it wasn't caught now the doctor said she would have needed a kidney transplant. I am forever grateful to Apple for developing such an amazing lifesaving product. Now I can send her off to college and know that she can monitor her HR and seek attention if it alarms her again.
Tim Cook responded to Stacey in an email, and this morning tweeted about the event. "Stories like Deanna's inspire us to dream bigger and push harder every day," Cook's tweet reads. Apple has even teamed up with Stanford for its own study on whether the Apple Watch can detect abnormal heart rhythms and other common heart problems.
In addition to Cardiogram's study on abnormal heart rhythms, a study published by the company late last year reported that the Apple Watch may be able to accurately detect hypertension and sleep apnea. The study found that Cardiogram's deep neural network was able to recognize hypertension (aka high blood pressure) with 82 percent accuracy and sleep apnea with 90 percent accuracy. In 2018, Cardiogram's latest study suggested the Apple Watch can be used to detect the signs of diabetes.
Popular Stories
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple regularly refreshes the MacBook Pro models, and a new version that uses M5 series chips is in the works. Apple just finished refreshing most of the Mac lineup with M4 chips, and now it's time for the M5. Rumors suggest that we could see the first M5 MacBook Pro models this fall.
Design
There have been no rumors of a design update for the M5 MacBook Pro models that are coming this...
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site.
The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Facebook was all about staying connected with friends and family. However, as the social media platform added new features and grew over time, that core experience began to get drowned out.
That changes starting now, according to Meta, which today introduced a new feature that will "bring back the joy" of classic Facebook.
Specifically, Meta has redesigned the...
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing.
Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1.
Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
Update 7:25 pm: Based on comments from our forums, it appears the original Weibo post may have been mistranslated and "8K" actually refers to the high price of the device rather than 8K video recording capabilities. The iPhone 16 Pro currently starts at 7,999 yuan in China.
Our original article follows below.
Apple's forthcoming iPhone 17 Pro models are capable of shooting 8K video, up...
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect.
There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
The upcoming iOS 18.4 update for the iPhone adds an Ambient Music feature to Control Center. Below, we take a closer look at how it works.
iOS 18.4 is currently in beta, so the Ambient Music feature is not widely available yet. The update will likely be released to the general public next week.
To use the feature on iOS 18.4, open Control Center and tap on the plus sign in the top-left...
Last week, we covered a report claiming that Apple's book-style foldable iPhone (or "iPhone Fold," as we are provisionally calling it here) will use liquid metal hinges to improve durability and help minimize screen creasing. Today, a Chinese leaker provided more details on the properties of this hinge material that help to clarify why Apple chose it for its first foldable device.
According...