iPod Does Not Harm Pacemakers
Alleged Negative Impact of Music Players Proven False
Electronic noise from digital music players does not affect cardiac pacemakers.
A new study shows that electronic noise from iPods does not cause problems in cardiac pacemakers. This study overturns a previous one from May last year that claimed sounds coming from a MP3 player would cause cardiac pacemakers to malfunction. A pacemaker is a small device that is placed under the skin of one's chest or abdomen to help control abnormal heart rhythms. This device uses electrical pulses to prompt the heart to beat at a normal rate.
Charles Berul, a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Children's Hospital Boston, said that he was prompted to do the study because he didn't see problems with iPods among his patients that used pacemakers. “Many of our pacemaker patients have iPods and other digital music players, and we’ve never seen any problem,” he said.
Testing Procedures
A test was conducted on 51 patients at Children's Hospital Boston who used active pacemakers or implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (small devices about the size of a pager that are placed below the collarbone to monitor the heart's rhythm). The patients were tested against four digital music players-- the Apple Nano, Apple Video, SanDisk Sansa, and Microsoft Zune. The patients were required to lie down in case they fainted, and each music player was placed directly over their pacemaker.
Results
None of 255 separate tests caused interference with the function of the heart-assisting device and none of the patients showed symptoms. “This provides reassuring evidence that should allay the fears of people using iPods and other digital music players,” Dr. Berul said.
Although the MP3 players did not harm the actual cardiac device, they did interfere with the communications between the device and the programmer. The programmer is a computerized device used by physicians to check and recalibrate the pacemaker (or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator). The interruptions were visible in 29 of 204 tests, when the digital player was moved away from the heart device. Larger digital music players (such as the Zune and Apple Video) caused more interference with telemetry than the smaller players.
The electrophysiology team at Children's Hospital Boston concluded that while digital music players do not harm the heart-assisting device, patients should not use digital music players when the doctor is reprogramming their device. “We can’t conclude that it’s completely safe to have an iPod right on top of the device for hours at a time,” Berul said. “That’s why we suggest the precaution of keeping it at least six inches away.”
The study was published April 2008 issue of the journal Heart Rhythm.
