Compatibility of implanted cardio defib with MIG and TIG

One possible source for a torso sized Farraday cage is a fencing "lame". Modern fencing (as in: Touche!) uses electronic scoring. When the tip or blade of your weapon touches the metalized jacket of your opponent, it completes a circuit to score a touch. Foil uses a conductive fabric vest that just covers the torso, and saber uses one with conductive sleeves. There are several technologies around. The old ones used to have silver plated copper wire woven into the fabric. Newer ones have stainless steel wires or conductive plastic coatings. Because of the physical activity & constant poking & thwacking, they tend to wear out over time, or they corrode from sweat to the point where they develop dead spots where a touch won't score. The point is that a heavily used one that you could get cheap may be suspect. A good foil vest goes for ~$65 - $100.

Doug White

Reply to
Doug White
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I am doing my research, and thank you!

Reply to
Don Foreman

Mary has suggested cutting the bottom out of a garbage can and putting shoulder straps on it. I think she just wants the photos.

Stuff I've read so far seems to indicate that E-fields are usually not an issue. The ICD device inputs are differential input, E-fields are significantly attenuated by our bodies and the ICD's themselves have effective shielding. If there is an issue it'll be due to magnetic fields and their first time derivative. Lame, foil, etc would have negligible effect on B-fields of frequencies that would matter.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Far more field reduction would be achieved by simply minimizing the area enclosed by the welding circuit, as perhaps in binding the ground cable to the torch lead for most of their lengths. I don't remember much about vector calculus and I sure as hell can't derive Green's theorem anymore, but I do recall some basic fields theory.

Knowing the test standard would suffice for me. I'll accept responsibility from there.

Thank for that. I don't know if it applies to ICD's. I need to tawk to Lucy at Medtronic. She surely knows people.

Ya mean like daytime TV and bingo? Welllll... I've seen nothing indicating that light welding might fry the ICD or drop the user acutely dead, so I'm thinkin' it'll be more like see how she goes and stop if I feel a bit off.

Reply to
Don Foreman

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Jano...that would be neet..anja could pump in cool air from the exhaust from da shopvac....a nifty air conditioned shell you could weld from in comfort!

Or hook it up to the shop heater fer ya guys what live inda snow country

"First Law of Leftist Debate The more you present a leftist with factual evidence that is counter to his preconceived world view and the more difficult it becomes for him to refute it without losing face the chance of him calling you a racist, bigot, homophobe approaches infinity.

This is despite the thread you are in having not mentioned race or sexual preference in any way that is relevant to the subject." Grey Ghost

Reply to
Gunner Asch

I imagine that the occupational safety doctors do know the bottom-line answer. Lots of welders have heart problems, but we have not heard so many stories that they had to retire because the HF from TIG or MIG welders bothered their pacemakers.

Anyway, these doctors are the ones that make the legal decision as to what activities (and thus jobs) must be curtailed subsequent to any medical procedure or condition.

The doctor that implanted the defib probably also does know the answer, even if he has no idea what a Tesla is.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

An off the wall thought, can you get a model that has some sort of way to disable it temporarily? Maybe a remote control using a digital code, or better yet an external reset switch ;-)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

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I have a doodad that shows the relative strength of RF in the vicinity of the doodad. It's not very selective, just has a bunch of LEDs that light up, more lit means stronger field. Anyway, using it near my TIG welder and torch with different types of cobbled up RF shields shows that proximity is most important. My "shielding" hardly attenuated the RF at all, while moving the welding cables to different places made the most difference. The RF radiation from the interaction of the torch, ground plate, and cables is directional too. So it appears that, using my cheap RF detecter, my RF shielding is almost useless compared to keeping the cables and torch as far away as possible. ERS

Reply to
etpm

You need to look at how such decisions are made. For most activities there are simply not sufficient data (see my post on ham radio). The decision is then guided by what is reasonable under the circumstances and yes, the medicolegal issues are very much in play.

For example someone mentioned using a fencing lame for protection. This is a brilliant idea but until it has been tested *on human subjects* there is no way a Dr. will recommend one way or the other on its use (to my knwledge such research has not been done). In fact I wish I took up fencing earlier, it would have made for an interesting study.

Is recommendation based on reasonable analysis of the problem (read: educated guess) always good? History of medicine is full of episodes where a good idea on paper turned out to be a very bad idea in practice. So the advice the doc gives you today may be reversed tomorrow. That is the nature of the beast.

Don is fortunate that he has a cardiac problem (well, fortunate is perhaps a poor choice of words :-) in that cardiology has one of the best specialty records of testing hypotheses and most of the practice is evidence based. However, there are many holes in the knowledge and areas where testing simply will not happen unless someone is really interested and *can get the money to do the research*. Sadly, most of the current research is funded by pharmaceutical companies and is directed to drive sales of their products. So, unless an enterprising cardiologist can bamboozle Miller or Lincoln together, perhaps, with Leon Paul or another fencing manufacturer to put up money for a study we shall never know if the lames work as a protection.

In all this one has to realize that as a patient one is a sovereign being and has a right to make ones own decision when presented with options unless there are legal issues affecting others e.g. driving. There are many who refuse treatment and do well. Longevity is not always the highest priority. The important thing is that the decision is *informed*. Which brings us full circle.

Reply to
Michael Koblic

Well, the Doctors have the little programming module with the inductive coil TX/RX antenna to do all this and more - but for obvious liability reasons they aren't going to hand one to you. EVER.

Perhaps they can build a limited-access version that only has certain commands available (the rest Read Only) that can be issued to the patient?

Set it to "Welding Mode" (after they invent one and program a new model with it, of course...) when you go out in the shop, which would turn down the sensitivity and require a longer bout of arrythmia before it takes action. Welding interference might make spikes of noise on the sense electrodes, but the signal for the Sinus Rythym will still be underneath it. Or not, if there really is a problem.

And if you were wearing the module it could beep a speaker or into an earphone when it sees something it doesn't like and is pondering whether to trigger a defib pulse. You cut the arc, it starts seeing nice normal rythym, and it beeps the "Oh - Nevermind..." all clear.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

It's looking more and more like option B might be my only option and best bet. I've no doubt that he's a better weldor than I. My projects are typically little pissant projects involving a minute or less or pedal-down time. Could I go to him, at his convenience of course?

Mary has volunteered that she might be willing to do a Vo-Tech course. I think she'd be a quick study based on the precision I see in her quilts and she's competent with handguns -- hands-eye coordination activities. So, MIG for sure, TIG very probably, don't care about stick. Whadda teammate, eh?

Are you fishing in FL, I hope? It's that time of year. We're getting lots of snow this year, lakes might be up again in the spring after the droughts of the past two years. Honeycrisp apples are still good in the grocery stores, don't know how long that'll last.

Reply to
Don Foreman

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