ROCHESTER, Minn., March 9 (UPI) -- Normal cell phone calls have no negative impact on hospital medical devices, say U.S. Mayo Clinic researchers.
The team, led by David Hayes of the Mayo Clinic Rochester's Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, made calls on two cellular phones with different technologies and different carriers near 192 medical devices hooked up to patients.
Three hundred tests were performed over a five-month period in 2006 and not a single problem occurred.
The authors say their trial and two earlier studies prove that cell phones will not interfere with the operation of lifesaving medical equipment and hospitals should reverse their current policies that ban the phones from most hospital campuses.
The study appears in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, which also contains two reports detailing which technological devices do cause patient care equipment to malfunction.
