There's no denying the technological impact of Apple's iconic iPod and its subsequent dominance in the digital music marketplace, and, considering its prolific rise and ongoing consumer dominance, the occasional bug, fault, and glitch are perhaps tolerable in an otherwise superb piece of kit. However, one of this week's news stories would suggest that loving your iPod and duly keeping it close to your heart might be bad for your health, especially if you're fitted with a pacemaker.
More pointedly, according to a study carried out by Jay Thaker, a 17-year-old high school student, which was presented to a selection of heart specialists yesterday, close proximity to an iPod can trigger monitoring malfunctions in cardiac pacemakers due to electromagnetic interference.
Thaker, lead author on the heart-related study and a student at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan, revealed that iPod units positioned a mere 2 inches from the chests of patients fitted with a pacemaker caused electrical interference in 50 percent of them. Even when located around 18 inches from a patient's chest electrical interference was registered as disrupting the pacemaker's telemetry equipment, leading the implanted device to misinterpret the pace of the heart. In one test the pacemaker ceased to function completely.
The study was conducted at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University across 100 patients with an average age of 77, all equipped with implanted pacemaker devices. Thaker’s somewhat worrying results (which only focused on the iPod, and not the effects of other digital portable music players), were presented on Thursday at the annual meeting off the Heart Rhythm Society in Denver, Colorado.
While the test results are worth noting, the study's senior author, Dr. Krit Jongnarangsin (who is also an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Division of Cardiovascular Medicine) conceded that the patient and age demographic generally associated with iPod use doesn't coincide with the related demographic of those fitted with pacemakers, and therefore actual figures connected to possible misdiagnosis are hard to amass.
"Most pacemaker patients are not iPod users," said Jongnarangsin in a Reuters report. "This needs to be studied more."
Young Mr. Thaker, whose mother and father happen to be a rheumatologist and electrophysiologist respectively, is now aiming to conduct a similar test that will assess the effects of iPod use in location to implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs).
Your Talkback on this Story