The Difficulties Of Managing Implanted Medical Devices
With the explosion of medical devices to treat various medical ailments in medicine, we have seen significant improvements in quality and quantity of life. An underappreciated consequence of all of these electronic device therapies, however, has been the manpower and expertise required to manage these implanted electronic medical devices long-term.
Problems with electromagnetic interference (EMI) with medical devices are real. Innovations in medicine have come from various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum including analog and digital wireless technology, diagnostic and therapeutic radiation therapy and magnetic resonance imaging. The effects of these technologies on implanted electronic medical devices can vary and specialty physicians, ancillary health care providers, and medical device manufacturers expend significant man-hours managing these potential interference sources and their affects on devices without a single prospective randomized trial to guide us. The sheer number of devices and the many ways that EMI can interfere with these complex devices makes constructing an all-inclusive trial with sufficient number of “events” to compare difficult or nearly impossible. As a result, most of our management recommendations and hospital policies in this regard have been based from literature case reports or personal experience and expertise.
To date, recommendations for minimizing EMI with cardiac implantable electronic devices has Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
