The Health Blog

Listening to tunes on an iPod may be great for putting a skip in your step, but it can also play havoc with a heart pacemaker, a new study found.

A study by a Michigan high school senior along with several doctors found out that the portable music players caused pacemakers to malfunction in 50 percent of patients.

The biggest concern is that pacemakers store the history of a heart’s rhythms, said Jay Thaker, the Okemos High School student, who worked with several doctors on the research. “If a physician was to go back and look at that (history), the physician might think that the patient was having abnormal heart rhythms,” he added.

This effect may pose danger to heart patients which might be treated for conditions that aren’t really present. Further, if an iPod stopped a pacemaker from working in a patient who was totally dependent on their pacemaker, it could cause the heart to stop.

Many electric devices — such as cell phones, appliances, microwave ovens and high tension wires — can produce the same effect. That’s why doctors tell their patients not to put any electric device over their pacemaker.

For the study, Thaker and his research team — which included doctors from Michigan State University and the University of Michigan — held an iPod two inches from the chests of 83 patients for five to 10 seconds. The result: So-called “telemetry interference” occurred in 29 percent of the patients, and “over sensing” (a pacemaker misreading the heart’s function) occurred in 20 percent of patients. In one patient, the pacemaker stopped working. In some cases, interference was detected even when the iPods were held as far as 18 inches from the chest, the study found.

iPod users may argue that pacemaker patients aren’t the typical iPod user, but because the music players are so common, people with pacemakers need to be aware of the risk.

Source: AOL News
Photo Courtesy of Tom’s Hardware Guide