XLR99
HalfDork
2/26/16 7:12 p.m.
I went to a cardiology conference at work today, and learned that new pacemakers are using Hall sensors to make them MRI compliant. My boss thinks I'm a dork, and I thought my surgeon was going to get booted out for laughing for five minutes straight when I said that Medtronic was probably going to all the junkyards stripping all the distributors out of old Saabs for their Hall sensors.
In other news, there was a Viagra booth in the vendor area, with reps who looked like the women from the commercials. It was pretty entertaining watching the 'men over 40' swarming around the booth...
I thought hall sensors were metallic/magnetic?
I guess I'm a dork too.
XLR99
HalfDork
2/27/16 8:28 a.m.
Ross, I have pretty minimal knowledge of implanted pacers, but from what I've seen, programming is pretty similar to tuning your engine management system, just add a bunch of zeros at the end of the price tag. Also, no OBD port to plug into
The standard pacers and internal defibs use a magnetic switch that will deactivate them. Obviously this could be bad if you require use of your pacer or AICD during your MRI.
Apparently the advantage of the Hall sensor is that you can temporarily reprogram the pacer to ignore the magnetic field and continue working normally.
A couple articles I discovered, for anyone bored/interested:
MRI Conditional Pacemakers
Magnets
