Apple’s warning to keep the iPhone 12 away from cardiac devices due to electromagnetic interference was further underlined by U.S. cardiologists this week in a new report (via NBC25 News)
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Apple’s iPhone 12 series includes a series of magnets that help align the phone with Apple’s MagSafe charging accessory to maximize charging, and Apple already advises users with implanted pacemakers and defibrillators to keep their iPhone and MagSafe accessories a a safe distance from such devices.
To test the extent of the risk, Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute cardiologist Gurjit Singh and colleagues recently conducted further 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 a honeiPhone 12. Cardiac devices have switches that respond to an external magnet to alter the functioning of the device, which allows 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 we approached the iPhoneó to the patient’s chest, the defibrillator was disabled,” said Dr. Singh. “We saw in the external defibrillator programmer that the device’s functions were suspended and remained suspended. When we removed the phone from the patient’s chest, the defibrillator immediately returned to its normal function.”
“We were all amazed,” he said. “We assumed that the magnet would be too weak on a phone to trigger the defibrillator’s magnetic switch.”
The findings are significant, as Dr. Singh is an expert in the use of devices such as implantable defibrillators that detect irregular heartbeats and return the heart to normal rhythm, and pacemakers that use electricity to keep the heart beating. After the discovery, Dr. Singh and his colleagues immediately sent a report of their findings to the Heart rhythm medical journal published on January 4, 2021.
“We believe that our findings have far-reaching implications on a large scale for people who live daily with these devices, who, without thinking, put the phone in their shirt pocket or top pocket or jacket – unaware that it can cause their defibrillator or pacemaker to function in a way that could be potentially lethal. “
The comments underline the medical evidence published in January, which warned that “iPhone 12” models and related “MagSafe” devices could “potentially inhibit a patient’s life-saving therapy” due to magnetic interference with implanted medical devices. Apple provides more information about this issue in the “Important iPhone security information” section of the PiPhone User Guide.