A Bad Day in the EP Lab?

With the introduction of Apple's new tiny iPod shuffle, we are concerned about the potential medical error that could arise in our Electrophysiology Laboratory now:

"Well, Mrs. Smith, we have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that you do not have the Medtronic implantable event recorder in your chest.

But the good news is that you can listen to tunes any time you like with over 4 GB of memory and the potential to play 1000 songs!"

Heh.

-Wes

Pacemakers and iPods Revisited

Finally, another study confirms the safety of iPods and pacemakers.

For this study, Bassen tested a second-generation iPod Nano, a second-generation iPod shuffle, a fifth-generation iPod Video with a 30-gigabyte hard drive, and a standard iPod with a 15-gigabyte hard drive and dock connector.


For all of them, data taken at 0.5 and 1.0 cm from the case showed a field of 0.2 micro-Tesla or less, with a highly localized 100 kilohertz sinusoidal signal.


The fields existed only in an area of about 1 cm2 and were not measurable at distances greater then 1 cm from the case, Bassen said.


He also found no measurable fields near the earphone cable, except at the earphone itself.

Hopefully, the American Heart Association will pick up on this story and print a retraction to their earlier fear-mongering quiz.

-Wes

h/t: MedPage Today.