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A researcher at the Food and Drug Administration has published a study that contradicts findings released last spring suggesting that iPods interfered with pacemaker function.
That earlier study, accompanied by warnings to grandparents to avoid their iPod-toting grandchildren, had been presented by a 17-year-old high school student at the Heart Rhythm Society's 28th Annual Scientific Sessions.
Raising Concerns
Fifty percent of the patients studied experienced malfunction of their device when the iPod was held two inches from the patients' chests for five to 10 seconds. It caused the implanted devices to misread the heart's pacing, and, in one case, caused the device to stop functioning, the report claimed.
It quantified for the first time what had been suspected, based on anecdotal reports: that the digital player interfered with pacemakers. The study likely gained more attention than it might otherwise have attracted because its author, Jay Thaker, was then a high school senior.
Thaker had approached Krit Jongnarangsin, M.D., at the University of Michigan about doing a study using iPods after reading about a similar study of cell phones' effects on pacemakers.
Refuting Findings
However, an in-vitro study carried out by FDA researchers found the iPod's interference with the pacemaker device to be nonexistent. Researcher Howard Bassen led a team who measured the magnetic fields produced by four different iPod models, along with the voltages delivered inside the pacemaker by the magnetic fields from the iPods.
Specifically, each iPod was placed in the air, 2.7 centimeters above the pacemaker case, according to a summary of the experiments. The pacemaker case and leads were also placed in a saline-filled torso simulator. All measurements indicated there would be no effects on users with cardiac pacemakers.
The finding were published on Friday in the medical journal Heart Rhythm. The FDA did not initiate the study specifically in response to last year's findings, FDA spokesperson Karen Riley told MacNewsWorld. Devices that can interfere with pacemakers fall within the FDA's bailiwick, and the agency typically takes an interest in such possibilities.
Bassen notes the widely publicized findings that personal portable music players emit electromagnetic interference in the prelude to his article.
However, "based on the observations of our in-vitro study we conclude that no interference effects can occur in pacemakers exposed to the iPod devices we tested," he concludes.
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