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Manufacturers of heart pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are moving rapidly to minimize interference in their devices from all the high-tech toys flooding the market.
Some patients may remember a time when doctors had to surgically remove their pacemaker so they could get a critical MRI scan. The electronics from the huge magnets were simply overpowering to the sophisticated devices in their chests designed to monitor and correct subtle electrical disturbances in the heart.
Dr. Jared Bunch, with Intermountain Medical Center, said, "When there's interference, what it will do is send chaotic information back to the circuitry of the pacemaker."
But new generation implantable devices are being redesigned, so much so, patients now can safely get an MRI.
The FDA and others have been looking at things like the small music players we stick in our ears to see how much they interfere with heart devices.
At Intermountain Medical Center today, Bunch placed an MP3 player against the skin of a patient with a pacemaker. While there are concerns the small magnets in the earpiece might interfere with some of the older pacemakers, this new generation implant detected no interference.
Bunch said, "Once a year, we bring up a physician whose complete interest is in the psychology of people with ICDs,(implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) and we just talk and sit down and to alleviate fears."
Still, since cardiologists are seeing so many electronic devices on the marketplace, they're educating patients about things considered low risk and those labeled high risk.
Dr. Bunch said a music player worn normally around the belt during exercise with headphones in the ears should pose little risk, if any, to someone with a pacemaker or defibrillator.
On Sunday, the American Heart Association will release a new study on pacemakers and MP3 players.
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