Pacemaker users face no danger from gun detector
The increasing use of magnetometers to detect the concealed weapons of would-be airline hijackers has produced a clinical study of the effects of magnetism on cardiac pacemakers.
The conclusion: a newly developed Westinghouse magnetometer, going into use at Washington's Dulles International Airport, produces minor but clinically insignificant rate changes in a few special types of pacemakers. The device has no effect on the unipolar fixed rate pacemakers and on both unipolar and bipolar triggered ventricular pacemakers. These three types account for the vast majority of pacemakers now in use.
Physicians at George Washington School of Medicine, and the Potomac Fund for Cardiovascular Research, Washington, DC, conducted the study for the Federal Aviation Administration.
"It had been known for some time that unipolar pacemakers were more sensitive to external electromagnetic fields," said Nicholas P.D. Smyth, MD, one of the principal investigators. "Electromagnetic
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