Apple’s warning to keep the iPhone 12 away from heart devices due to electromagnetic interference was further underscored by US cardiologists this week in a new report (via NBC25 News).
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Apple’s iPhone 12 series includes a range of magnets that help align the phone with Apple’s MagSafe charging accessory to maximize charging, and Apple already advises users with implanted pacemakers and defibrillators to keep iPhone and MagSafe accessories safe. keep away from such devices.
To test the magnitude of the risk, Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute cardiologist Gurjit Singh and his colleagues recently conducted further tests to see how much impact Apple products are having.
According to Dr. Singh, more than 300,000 people in the US undergo surgery to implant one of these devices each year, and about one in four smartphones sold last year was an “iPhone 12”. The cardiac devices have switches that respond to an external magnet to change the operation of the device, allowing them to be operated without the need for surgery.
Curious about possible interference with electrical devices, Dr. Singh and colleagues slipped an iPhone 12 Pro over a patient’s chest with an implantable defibrillator.
“When we brought the iPhone close to the patient’s chest, the defibrillator turned off,” said Dr. Singh. “We saw on the external defibrillator programmer that the device’s functions were suspended and suspended. When we removed the phone from the patient’s chest, the defibrillator immediately returned to normal function.”
“We were all amazed,” he said. “We assumed the magnet in a phone would be too weak to activate the defibrillator’s magnetic switch.”
The findings are significant, as Dr. Singh is an expert in the use of devices such as implantable defibrillators that detect an irregular heartbeat and shock the heart back to a normal rhythm, and pacemakers that use electricity to make the heart beat. After the discovery, Dr. Singh and his colleagues immediately submitted a report of their findings to the Heartbeat medical journal published January 4, 2021.
“We believe that our findings have profound implications for the people who live with these devices on a daily basis, who will without thinking about putting their phones in their breast pocket, top pocket or jacket – not knowing that this is their defibrillator or pacemaker to function. in a way that could potentially be lethal. “
The comments underscore medical evidence published in January warning that iPhone 12 models and related MagSafe devices “may inhibit life-saving therapy in a patient” due to magnetic interference with implanted medical devices. Apple provides more information on this issue in the “Important Safety Information for iPhone” section of the iPhone User Guide.