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Cell Phones Interfere With Most Hospital Equipment, Study Says

by Tim Stevens on September 7, 2007 at 10:15 AM

Mobile Phones NOT OK in Hospitals

So, conflicting news in the realm of mobile phone use in hospitals. Earlier this week we brought word that mobile phones are becoming more accepted in hospitals, a place where they had long been banned (at least on certain floors) due to fears of interference with sensitive medical gadgets and such. Now, however, a report out of Europe indicates that phones are as potentially dangerous as ever and should be kept away from patients.

The report was conducted by Dutch researchers, who tested 61 different medical devices against a variety of mobile phones. More than half of the devices -- defilibrators, external pacemakers, critical care monitors -- suffered some sort of interference, with one such medical contraption suffering a "hazardous" failure when a cell phone was almost ten feet away! Apparently, 3G phones were less likely to interfere with medical equipment than older model.

For the most part, though, the interference only took place when gadgets were a couple of feet from medical devices, which makes an outright ban of all cell phones from all parts of a hosiptal a bit extreme. The report concluded simply that "the policy to keep mobile phones one metre from the critical care bedside seems warranted."

So, watch where you're standing the next time you go to visit an ailing friend or relative in the hospital. That slim new celly in your back pocket could mean trouble, and not just if you sit on it.

From textually.org and BBC.

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Tags: cell phones, CellPhones, hospitals

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