Smartphones & Pacemakers: Do Smartphones Create Problems For Pacemakers?

[Webster]

Inquistor - Phones And Pacemakers: Do Smartphones Create Problems For Pacemakers?

Do smartphones create pacemaker problems? That is the question answered by Dr Carsten Lennerz, first author and cardiology resident in the Clinic for Heart and Circulatory Diseases, from the German Heart Centre.

“Pacemakers can mistakenly detect electromagnetic interference (EMI) from smartphones as a cardiac signal, causing them to briefly stop working. This leads to a pause in the cardiac rhythm of the pacing dependent patient and may result in syncope. For implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) the external signal mimics a life threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmia, leading the ICD to deliver a painful shock.”

Studies were done 10 years ago which caused guidelines to be set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was recommended that a distance of 15 to 20 centimetres be kept between a smartphone and a pacemaker.

In order to determine if the guidelines from 10 years ago should still be maintained, a study was conducted on 308 patients. These patients all had some type of cardiac device implanted in them. All of the patients were then exposed to an electromagnetic field that is common with newer smartphones and placed the phones directly on the skin of each participant. The phones used in this study were the Samsung Galaxy 3, Nokia Lumia, and HTC One XL

To determine if newer smartphones create pacemaker problems, the phones were put through a series of tests that would commonly occur during normal usage. These tests included calling, disconnecting, talking, and texting.

During the entire testing phase, the 308 patients were being monitored by a 6-lead electrocardiogram. This allowed any cardiac abnormalities to be seen in real time and to record any of the abnormalities.

More than 3,400 tests were done in this study. Only one of the patients had a problem. When this one patient was exposed to electromagnetic waves from the Nokia and HTC smartphones, his implantable cardioverter defibrillator misread the magnetic field.

The FDA was asked for a comment on this latest test. A spokesperson for the FDA did not want to comment on the results of this test; however, the spokesperson did give a statement about smartphones creating problems with pacemakers.

“FDA continues to monitor the use of cell phones for possible interactions with other medical devices. Should harmful interference be found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference and work to resolve the problem. Based on current research, cell phones would not seem to pose a significant health problem for the vast majority of pacemaker wearers. Still, people with pacemakers may want to take some simple precautions to be sure that their cell phones don’t cause a problem.”

Do you believe that smartphones create pacemaker problems?

Thoughts?

 

[Smiley]

My father has a pacemaker and a smartphone. I barely ever talk to him, but if there were any problems, I'm sure he'd be hospitalized by now and someone would notify me about it, so I guess, in his case, there are no smartphone - pacemaker related problems. If there are, I don't know about them.