Doctors Highlight Potential Risk of iPhone 12 Interference with Pacemakers

Apple’s warning to keep the iPhone 12 away from heart devices due to electromagnetic interference was highlighted by U.S. cardiologists this week in a new report (via NBC25 News).

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 pacemakers and implanted defibrillators to keep iPhone and ‌MagSafe‌‌ accessories at a safe distance from these devices.

To test the extent of the risk, Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute cardiologist Gurjit Singh and his colleagues recently performed additional testing to see how influential Apple products are.

According to Dr. Singh, more than 300,000 people in the United States undergo surgery to implant one of these devices each year, and about one in four smartphones sold last year was an “iPhone 12”. Heart devices have switches that respond to an external magnet to change how the device works, allowing them to be controlled without surgery.

Curious about the potential interference with electrical devices, Dr Singh and his colleagues took an iPhone 12 Pro and slipped it over the chest of a patient with an implantable defibrillator.

“When we brought the iPhone closer to the patient’s chest, the defibrillator was turned off,” Dr Singh said. “We saw on the programmer of the external defibrillator that the functions of the device were suspended and remained suspended. When we removed the phone from the patient’s chest, the defibrillator immediately resumed its normal function.”

“We were all amazed,” he said. “We had assumed that the magnet would be too weak in a phone to trigger the magnetic switch on the defibrillator.”

The results are significant, since Dr Singh is an expert in the use of devices such as implantable defibrillators that detect an irregular heartbeat and shock the heart to get it back to normal, and pacemakers that use electricity. to maintain the heart rate. Following the discovery, Dr Singh and his colleagues immediately submitted a report of their findings to the Heartbeat medical journal published on January 4, 2021.

“We believe our findings have profound, large-scale implications for people who live with these devices on a daily basis, who without thinking, will put their phones in their shirt pocket, top pocket or coat – unaware that this can happen. causing their defibrillator or pacemaker to work in a way that could be potentially fatal. “

The comments highlight medical evidence released in January that warned that the iPhone 12‌ models and associated ‌MagSafe‌ devices can “potentially inhibit life-saving therapy in a patient” due to magnetic interference with implanted medical devices. Apple provides more information about this issue in the “Important Safety Information for iPhone” section of the iPhone User Guide.