[News] Philips again!

[SevereApnea]

Arie!

You seem to have an affinity for Philips!

Impressive list of medical devices that the legal team at Philips have concocted, hope they have not missed a few in their disclaimer!
Many of these more modern devices have such low ferrous components that they are regarded as MRI safe.
Anyone out there with contact lenses with metal? Will they move? Will they pop out? Will they change my focus? I don't understand.

More seriously though what grabs my attention is this, that the article says that...

"More than 17 million masks containing magnetic clips have been distributed by Philips Respironics to date." 

That is some profit! Or were they indeed actually sold? Or merely 'distributed'? Perhaps they were 'handouts' to DME's? Incentives? dark secrets? can we ever know? How much do they actually cost to manufacture?

If Philips sees this as a potential problem for the patients, then why should they not follow the example of motor vehicle manufacturers and issue an immediate and world-wide recall?

To save face and validate their commitment to patient-centric care, surely they should be offering to buy back or replace all such devices that they construe might have deleterious effects on patient health, the same patients they are so passionate about?

Call me naïve perhaps.

[ST Dog]

Impressive list of medical devices that the legal team at Philips have concocted, 

Not an exhaustive list. You'll never see that, it's impossible since new items get created that you couldn't have included on such a list before they existed. So it's a list of examples. More example than before, but still not everything.

Use your head/talk to a professional to determine similar devices that MIGHT be affected.

Agree lots of newer versions that are unaffected, but they can't count on people knowing the difference. Not with todays legal system.
(The same one that requires warnings not to put you hand under a running lawnmower)

Again these are not really different from what ResMed uses. Yet Philips has a target on it.

Affinity? Most of my masks are ResMed, including one with magnetic clips. My favorite ever was F&P (broke and couldn't replace the part/mask as it was too old)
My one Philips made mask? I didn't like it.

[A KLERK]

.....
 • Some medical devices may be affected by magnetic fields. The magnetic clips in this mask should be kept at least 2 in. (50 mm) away from any active medical device with special attention to implanted devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators and cochlear implants.
.....

I just overheard the official reason for this mess. It is the FDA who has initiated this by changing the 50 mm. minimum distance to a whopping 150 mm. Philips just had to change their policy... 
I still find it strange that the statement said something like "a voluntary notification to inform users". Why not say that it was an FDA initiative?

[ST Dog]

I just overheard the official reason for this mess. It is the FDA who has initiated this by changing the 50 mm. minimum distance to a whopping 150 mm. Philips just had to change their policy... 

If that's true then ResMed is in the same boat since they currently state 50mm like Philips did unless they have much weaker magnets.
And 400mT isn't very strong.

Found MIT's guide and 400 mT is the limit for the general population, while cardiac implants are 0.5 mT.
https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/M..._Guide.pdf