Using mobile telephones in hospitals reduces the error rate in medical care because of more timely communication and rarely causes electronic magnetic interference, School of Medicine researchers report in the February issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia.

The study is believed to be the first to investigate whether use of cell phones by medical personnel has a beneficial impact on safety. It was based on 4,018 responses from attendees at the 2003 meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Of those anesthesiologists who participated in the survey, 65% reported using pagers as their primary mode of communications and 17% said they used cellular telephones. Forty percent of respondents who use pagers reported delays in communications, compared to 31% of cellular telephone users.

The senior author, Dr. Keith Ruskin, associate professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Neurosurgery, says the electronic interference from mobile telephones was a problem in the past because of older telemetry equipment and analog cell phones.

"The new digital cell phones used much higher power and operate at a different frequency," Ruskin notes. "The small risks of electromagnetic interference between mobile telephones and medical devices should be weighed against the potential benefits of improved communication."

He says the reported 2.4% prevalence of electronic interference with life support devices such as ventilators, intravenous infusion pumps and monitoring equipment is much lower than the 14.9% risk of observed medical error or injury due to a delay in communication.

-- By Jacqueline Weaver

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