ASTM Committee Calls for Broad Participation to Develop Standards for Compatible Metal Detectors and Medical Devices

摘要

A SMALL NUMBER OF HEART PATIENTS experienced slight discomfort when their cardiac pacers reacted with metal detectors at security check-points. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers the interference not life-threatening, authorities at a 1998 FDA meeting called for the creation of device-performance standards to promote consensus among doctors, medical-device manufacturers, and makers of electronic-surveillance systems. "A proliferation of complex, highly sensitive electronic medical devices has brought an increasing attention to the electromagnetic environment a person experiences in daily life," says Robert Podhrasky, a vice president of Garrett Metal Detectors, Garland, Texas, who attended the 1998 meeting. "The list includes cardiac pacemakers, cardioverter defibrillators, neural stimulation devices, and hearing-assistance devices. Many electrical and electronic products have the potential of temporarily disrupting the operation of these devices and medical-device designers are very serious about electromagnetic compatibility."