ventilator and pacemaker HELP!

Hi,
If anyone can help with this i will be impressed!
I just had a baby who was born prematurely and is in the hospital and attached to a breathing machine that is affecting my pacemaker. Everytime i go near her/the machine, I feel like i have had too much coffee. I become jittery, and very short of breath, like someone is pushing on my chest. The machine she is on is a high frequency oscillatory ventilator. So my question is.. What do i do? Stay away from it altogether or keep a safe distance? And what is worst case?
Help is greatly appreciated!!

3 Comments

Are you REALLY in Norway????

by donr - 2015-01-17 02:01:33

I ask because I do not know the exact standards for shielding medical devices there. It is rational assume that their standards are the same as for med devices in the States, so there should be essentially zero electromagnetic energy escaping from ventilator to affect your PM.

It's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to shield the ventilator any more than it is right now. Besides, to improve thew shielding would require essentially a complete Faraday cage around it - not practical.

I read into your post that you do not have to be right on top of the ventilator, but apparently at some distance, so unless they have a much longer hose to move it away, you have a real challenge. Which brings up the issue of allowable distance from the baby it can be before it loses effectiveness.

European power is 230 V, 50 Hertz (Voltage varies, but it's about 230 & all electrical machinery will accept that voltage). My experience w/ 240V, 60 Hertz power is that you have to have your PM w/i about 4 inches of a 30 Amp cable at full load to generate sufficient interference to cause a problem. No medical ventilator is going to operate at those power levels, so I ruled out Electro-magnetic effects. Radio Frequency will not play a part, since we are talking 8-30 Hertz for the system.

As to permanent magnets causing problems, I have tested a rare earth super magnet w/i inches of my PM w/o ill effect. I have wrestled fairly large speakers w/ permanent magnets around, close to my chest w/o ill effect. We had a thread several months ago about rock concerts & the general experience was that people felt the effects of mechanical resonance in the chest areas as opposed to magnetic effects. This was in the 20th row in front of Huge base /sub woofer speakers.

Now, it is NOT unusual for PM's to be affected beneath high voltage power lines where they sag low across a road. It is also not unusual for PM hosts who enter large power generating stations - like hydro-electric dams - to feel the effects of magnetic fields. Lowes/ Best Buy; any place w/ theft /security protection systems w/ the paired poles at the exits can cause problems - but they have to have very strong fields in order to detect items at the distances they are intended to work from.

From the amount of info given, this is my best explanation for the issue.

Donr

Ventilator

by Squad12 - 2015-01-17 10:01:59

Stephenie,

You cannot see RF, EMF, ELF or any noise. I have had interruptions of my pacemaker in different places and have explained it to my doctor and he thinks I am crazy. I have a long background in electronics. I have had a small portable Oreck vacuum cleaner trigger my pacemaker from about 18 inches away. I have been in several places and had the feelings you have had. I was driving on a dirt road and started to get light headed and jittery. I looked up and I was under some high voltage power lines.

What people don't realize is that the pacemaker has two leads. I know that they say the pacemaker and leads are shielded but where it is attached in the heart has to conduct. This is an antennae for noise. The person talked about people at concerts having issues. There are a lot of electronics involved at a concert including large electromagnets in speakers.

I don't know what type of pacemaker you have but I have a Medtronic A2DR01, MRI compatible. They have a reed relay for the magnet mode and I believe that when you get close to noise, the relay chatters, in turn causing irregular heartbeats and the feelings you have. The relays are about the size of an ink pen head.

They should be able to shield the pump for you or move it farther away when you want to be by your baby. The tubing is usually long enough. Don't be afraid to ask them and inform them of your symptoms when you get close to it.

Good luck. Prayers for your baby.
Dave





I'll give it a TRY!!!!!

by donr - 2015-01-17 12:01:44

Stephanie, this is but an educated guess! But it is based on rational analysis & experience of a bunch of us in here.

First off, the device is electromechanical, meaning that an electrical system excites a mechanical piston at a "High" frequency to move air in & out of your preemie's lungs.

I can reasonably rule out the device's effect on your PM. The frequency is just too LOW to affect it. For this device, "High " means between 8 & 30 cycles per second. Now human hearing cannot go that low (8 CPS). It stops at roughly 15-20 CPS. When you are in the room w/ the machine can you hear a very low frequency sound like a "Rumbling" noise? OR - if you are at all familiar w/ church organ music, there are frequencies in that down at the bottom of human hearing capabilities. Another reason I do not believe the device is affecting your PM is that it takes a magnetic field to affect a PM, & this device most likely does NOT have a strong enough field to bother your PM.

Here's what I THINK is happening to you: Your body cavity in the thorax area (Read that as lungs) is just the right dimension to oscillate at the frequency of the ventilator because of a phenomena called Resonance. Have you ever taken a soda bottle & blown across the open top & had it make a very low frequency sound? - Soda, beer, whiskey - any bottle w/ a small neck so you can blow across the opening will do this. Now that machine makes a sound & propagates vibrations through the air, whether you can hear them or not. They hit your chest & your body cavity resonates at the freq of the sound waves & you FEEL it as a vibration you described.

Many people in here have reported this happening at rock concerts where the band has whopping big bass & sub-woofer speakers. It's an uncomfortable feeling & there's nothing to stop it - it's a mechanical phenomena.
I have experienced it in a large Gothic church w/ a large air driven pipe organ that had very low freq pipes that produced sound so low in freq that it resonated w/i the entire structure & you could feel it, but not hear it. I know I could feel it in my chest almost as you have described it.

Don

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