Hand Held Metal Detectors And Pacemakers

The question of whether pacemakers present a safety issue in relation to metal detectors is one which we have paid close attention to over the years.

Hand held metal detectors and pacemakers.

This entry was posted in hand held detectors useful tips and advice walk through metal detectors. Pacemakers and icds may in fact set off the metal detector alarm though usually they do not but that doesn t cause any problem with the implantable devices. Metal detectors for airport and facility security applications can be either portals that a person walks through or can be hand held wands that are passed over a person s body. Pacemakers and metal detector wands can finally co exist peacefully in a world where security is essential.

Anecdotal reports had suggested that the electromagnetic field generated by the security scanners interfered. May 20 2003 washington d c hundreds of thousands of. Using hand held metal detectors for security screening is safe for patients with pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators new study results suggest. If they must use a wand tell them that the search must be done quickly and not to hold the wand over your pacemaker.

If it s held over your pacemaker for too long wand could temporarily affect your pacemaker. 31 healthday news heart patients with pacemakers or implanted defibrillators will find comfort from a german study that suggests that the handheld metal detectors used at airports won t cause the medical devices to malfunction. Given the short duration of security screening it is unlikely that your medtronic heart device will be affected by metal detectors walk through archways and hand held wands or full body imaging scanners also called millimeter wave scanners and 3d imaging scanners such as those found in airports courthouses and jails. By steven reinberg healthday reporter.

Use a hand held security wand. Security devices won t set off implanted heart monitors. However your pacemaker s metal parts may set off metal detector alarms. Hand held metal detector wands however the hand held scanner the tsa agent may use on you after you set off the metal detector contains a magnet which may momentarily interfere with.

Metal detectors use various technologies involving magnetic fields to detect the presence of metal. We are not aware of any report of a hobby type metal detector ever interfering with a pacemaker or other electronic medical device or having any other adverse health effect. From the webmd archives.