Parenting author and educator Maggie Dent says she has her smart watch to thank for potentially avoiding a stroke.
"There was something that flashed on my Fitbit watch and I thought, 'Oh I wonder what that is'," she told ABC Radio Adelaide's Sonya Feldhoff.
"And it said my heart rate was too high, it was 144 and my resting pulse is 64."
"I shook it, and I thought, 'I feel perfectly okay, something must be wrong with the Fitbit', and completely dismissed it."
After going about her day with no symptoms, Ms Dent noticed her watch was still showing that her heart rate was elevated — so she asked her son for advice.
"I just serendipitously happened to be in the home of my youngest son, who is an ED [emergency department] doctor," she said.
"It's extremely handy, because I would have ignored it."
Her son checked her pulse and told her to go straight to the emergency department.
The 67-year-old host of the ABC's Parental as Anything podcast was diagnosed with a atrial flutter and said her condition improved after medication.
A treating doctor told her that if the flutter had continued for more than 48 hours, it could have led to a stroke.
"I was able to bring it back to normal rhythm but there's no guarantee that would have happened if I hadn't been in [an] ED," she said.
Throughout the entire process, Ms Dent experienced no symptoms.
"Not even the mildest headache, no breathless, no tightening of chest, that's why I argued with my son," she said.
Due to her lack of symptoms, Ms Dent was in "complete denial" of anything being wrong, and warned other women not to dismiss their health concerns.
"We will minimise some of our discomfort that's going to put out anyone else," she said.
"So it's another side to not only a potential silent killer, but we also sometimes just don't put ourselves forward when anything is going to upset anyone else."
What is an atrial flutter?
The Heart Foundation's Natalie Raffoul said an atrial flutter, a type of arrhythmia, was when the top chambers of the heart beat "very rapidly and abnormally".
While some people experience symptoms of shortness of breath, fatigue, palpitations, and dizziness, other people — like Ms Dent — experience no symptoms.
"The main thing with an atrial flutter is it's often hard to catch; some people may not have many symptoms," Ms Raffoul said.
She said an atrial flutter could also be transient, coming on for "short periods of time, and then it can disappear".
She said a constant atrial flutter could lead to a blood clot, which in turn could lead to a stroke.
The Heart Foundation recommends women aged 45 and over, or Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women aged 30 and over, speak to their GP and have a heart health check.
Ms Dent said she would be keeping a much closer eye on her heart health from now on.
"I'm now back to where I was with a perfectly normal heartbeat, but a little more cautious as to if it does race again I will take it much more seriously than I did," she said.
"I'm really lucky to be here."
