Metal Detecting

Does anyone use a metal detector with their pacemaker? If so what cautions and types and if doctors approve these days.

1 Comments

Metal detectors

by Theknotguy - 2019-10-12 10:51:18

You probably can use most metal detectors on the market.  Idea to be not to have the coil turned on and active anywhere near your implant area.  I don't feel the loop is going to generate a large enough EMF to cause any problems with your pacemaker.  And the headphones for listening to the results shouldn't bother your pacemaker either.  

I feel most of the shops that sell metal detectors will let you at least try one out before purchasing or you can work with someone who has one to see if anything happens.  Worst case scenario is the metal detector will put your pacemaker into either a test mode or a reading mode  before anything bad happens.  

The thing I'm more concerned about are the rare earth magnets you can now purchase through the Internet.  I've been around some that you can't pull apart with your bare hands.  I'm really concerned about getting one of those close to my pacemaker.  Fortunately I've been able to keep them at least a  foot away from my pacemaker and haven't felt any bad results.  Not sure if the EMF is concentrated around the magnet and doesn't extend that far as I haven't tested for the size of the EMF area around the magnet.  Walked past one the other day that was on the guy's refrigerator.  It was placed high up and was less than a foot away from my pacemaker.  No problems.  But I'm not stupid enough to hold one directly over my pacemaker.  Don't need any crisis in  my life at this time.  

Oh, and the EMF put out by the metal detector is a lot smaller and further away than what you would have with a rare earth magnet.  So it shouldn't bother your pacemaker. 

Hope everything else is going well for you.  

 

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