This article originally appeared in the May 1995 FDA Consumer . The version below is from a reprint of the original article and contains revisions made in July 1995. Today's medical professionals rely heavily on wireless communication devices to help them do their jobs efficiently. And yet the proliferation of such gadgetry is not without its problems. Increasingly, medical and communications devices may be at odds with each other.
Every electrical device emits electromagnetic energy.
Most of the time the problem is merely annoying. For example, EMI could cause static on the screen of a hospital computer. But whenever anything interferes with a lifesaving medical device like a pacemaker or an apnea monitor, the results can affect the patient. Between 1979 and 1993, FDA received reports of more than 100 suspected incidents of EMI with medical devices. Because the interference was almost always fleeting and difficult to reproduce, most of those reports have not been verified or duplicated in laboratory settings.