Apple’s warning to keep the iPhone 12 away from cardiac devices due to electromagnetic interference was further highlighted by US cardiologists this week in a new report ( NBC25 News).
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The Apple iPhone 12 series includes a series of magnets that help align the phone with Apple’s MagSafe charging accessory to maximize charging, and Apple is already advising users with pacemakers and defibrillators to keep iPhone and MagSafe accessories at a safe distance from such devices.
To test the risk, cardiologist Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute Gurjit Singh and colleagues recently performed additional tests to see how much influence Apple products have.
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”. Cardiac devices have switches that respond to an external magnet to change the way the device works, allowing them to be controlled without the need for surgery.
Curious about the potential interference with electrical devices, Dr. Singh and his colleagues took an iPhone 12 Pro and passed it over a patient’s chest with an implantable defibrillator.
“When I brought the ‘iPhone’ close to the patient’s chest, the defibrillator was turned off,” said Dr. Singh. “I saw on the external defibrillator programmer that the functions of the device were suspended and remained suspended. When I took the phone from the patient’s chest, the defibrillator immediately returned to normal function.”
“We were all amazed,” he said. “I assumed the magnet would be too weak in a phone to trigger the defibrillator’s magnetic switch.”
The findings are significant because Dr. Singh is an expert in using devices such as implantable defibrillators that detect an irregular heartbeat and shock the heart at a normal rate and pacemakers that use electricity to keep the heart beating. Following the discovery, Dr. Singh and his colleagues immediately sent a report of their findings to HeartRhythm medical journal that was published on January 4, 2021.
“We believe that our findings have far-reaching implications for people who live with these devices on a daily basis, who, without thinking, will put their phone in their shirt pocket or top pocket or in their coat – not knowing that it can cause defibrillator or pacemaker to work in a way that could be potentially lethal. “
The comments highlight medical evidence published in January that warned that “iPhone 12” models and related related MagagSafe devices could “potentially inhibit a patient’s rescue therapy” due to magnetic interference with implanted medical devices. Apple provides more information about this issue in the “Important iPhone Safety Information” section of the iPhone User Guide.