MANY hospitals already restrict cellphone use to prevent signals interfering with sensitive medical equipment. Now a study suggests that modern cellphones have a bigger effect on equipment than older phones and that regulations may need to be beefed up to protect patients.
Erik van Lieshout and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Centre in the Netherlands tested 61 pieces of medical equipment commonly used in critical care units, such as ventilators and syringe pumps, and found that 33 per cent of the devices were adversely affected by cellphone signals. Problems included mechanical ventilators shutting down, safety alarms being…
