I want to know the different in voltage between a police taser and an implanted heart pacer-defibrillator. I know there’s some medical folks out there who can help me out!
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Tasers are 50,000 volts. Otherwise, google is failing me at this hour.
I found one that exploded.
Exploding Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator is the title.
The voltage issues are pretty irrelevant aren’t they (in terms of the difference in resistance between each application requiring different voltages anyway)?
Current might be more useful.
Or I could be being an idiot about this and missing something.
Amplitude (mV)
11.6
Impedance (Ohms)
748
Voltage pacing threshold (V)
1.0
Current pacing threshold (mA)
1.7
Pulse width pacing threshold (ms)
0.
epsimulator.com/images/Chaney_Lon_ICD_Implantation_03-11-2003_5936.pdf
oops.pasted the wrong thing there. Short version is, 5v on an ICD
For purposes of danger to the human body, isn’t it the amperage, not the voltage that matters?
Steven — Depends. Amperage and current path are important if determining if something is lethal — does it pass through the heart?
For danger alone, high voltages cause burns. It can nonlethal so long as you don’t apply it to the vital areas like the heart, but it can cause still cause damage.
cooper, 5v only?
I ask because I had a “pacemaker incident” a few months ago. My device shocked me 18 times in 10 minutes. And I still to this day have panic attacks about it, and basically stopped driving because of my fear of it happening while I’m driving.
Whenever I hear about cops tasering people I feel a particular sympathy, because of what I went through. And then to find out there’s this enormous difference in voltage, the effect on the human body has got to be overwhelming. I don’t know how people who’ve been tasered (the ones who survived) ever get back to living normal lives. I’m not even sure if I will.
You surely understand there is a big difference between delivering a shock internally to a specific set of tissue and something externally designed to stun your entire nervous system? I am certain feeling your heart get reset like that has to be harrowing, but it has little to do with the voltage.
For comparison: take 2 straight pins and attach them to a 9v battery then stick them a little into your arm. You won’t really feel anything at all. Now, lick them. It is a difference of nerves (your tongue has a lot, your arm not so much) and conductivity (saliva vs capillaries).
cooper, thanks for the clarification.
You know, doctors are notoriously unhelpful when it comes to explaining things like this to their patients. When I got the device implanted I asked them what the shock would be like. They were very blase about it–”oh, it’s a little shock, you’ll feel it but it’s not so bad.”
Wrong. It was so bad I couldn’t even stop crying for hours. It was light going off in my head and my body getting jerked so hard my glasses went flying. It was so hard the two friends who were supporting me both got shocked too.
So I guess my question of course is, is the jolt from an implant equivalent to the jolt from a taser. In terms of voltage, no. But I still believe that if my relatively minor shock could affect me so badly, imagine what people who are on the receiving end of tasers go through.
Also, as to current vs potential (amps vs volts) — Amps kill you — cook you, really –, but it is volts that interfere with your natural bioelectric operations.
Kactus, I tell my patients that the jolt from an internal defibrillator is like being kicked in the chest by a horse from the inside. Am I close? It’s awful. And yeah, my colleagues do a lousy job of explaining this stuff.
I think it is somewhat analagous to the sensation of being tasered, although it’s possible that the defibrillator is worse because it’s not just the shock with the defib but also the initial and resulting change in heart rhythm that contributes to the sensation. Now there’s a euphemism – sensation.
Yes Jay, that pretty much covers how it feels. Like your head’s exploding and your body is in somebody else’s hands. Unexpected and uncontrollable.
Thanks.
What happens if you get tasered and you have an internal defibrillator ? What’s the difference between a defibrillator and a pacemaker? Is there one?
Disclosure: I am not an expert or a taser salesperson.
Having been tasered I would say that it was the worst pain I had ever felt, for about 5 seconds. The longest 5 seconds of my life. Afterwards though, I was COMPLETLY fine. Up walking and talking.I’d rather be tasered than pepper sprayed any day of the week.
Of course I’m a 23 year old, healthy, physically fit woman.And I volunteered to be tasered, so I was expecting it. Also I was hit in the back so there was no chance of getting it in my face or groin area. Since the gun used the dart system, that could be damaging.
For people who have heart problems being tasered can be dangerous. Not always from the jolt itself, from the adreline rush that accompanies it. If you have an internal device the taser will probably interfere with it.
The taser that was used on me did not deliver any electricty at all. The electricty was converted via microship into T-waves which mimic the same impuleses the brain uses to tell the muscles what to do. I wasn’t being electrocuted, my muscle were just getting so many different messages that they locked up.
http://www.ddsp.com/airtaser.htm
I was shot with the one on the bottom. Also the current numbed the area around the darts that stuck into me. I didn’t feel it when they pulled them out. I bled a little, but not much.
BadKitty-
A defibrillator is a device that is used to restore normal heart beat when you are having a heart attack (think those machines with the two paddles you see on ER). Internal defibrillators do the same thing but are put are internal to a person– they are designed to only fire when the person is having a sustained heart contraction. A pacemaker is an implantable device used to regulate the heart beat to ensure that it cycles normally and are usually put in place for people with heartbeats that are slower than normal.
If you get tased with an internal defibrillator chances are nothing would happen to you right then and there because internal defibrillators are only active when you are having an abnormal cardiac event. Although I suppose the taser could cause a heart attack… I am not sure if there would be long term effects on the device. It is far more likely that a tasering would effect a pacemaker as that device is continually firing to ensure proper heart contraction.
p.s. wikipedia is usually pretty good with these sorts of questions.
note: i am not a bioelectrical engineer, even though i’m about to play one on the internet.
assuming these devices are designed and built halfway sensibly, i’d expect pacemakers to use very little current and low potential; internal defibrillators to use a fair bit more potential, and possibly a bit more current too; and a taser to use vastly larger potential but next to no current.
sending electrical pulses through blood-saturated heart muscle, using electrodes that are inside that muscle, isn’t a difficult problem (not nearly so difficult as figuring out what shape and size of pulses to use, or when to send them!) and so i’d expect those designs to go easy on your body. they’re supposed to be in there a long time, and to possibly shock you repeatedly over their (and your) lifetime, and their only job is to make sure that one muscle contracts just so.
tasers must send enough juice through you to make your major muscle groups contract out of all control, so that you can’t move, and do it using electrodes shot in willy-nilly who knows where. that’s a job for brute force to solve, but since we also want the things to not kill you if avoidable, you’d want to keep amperages low. (static shocks from walking on carpet can reach tens of kilovolts; lightning strikes — only usually lethal, after all — reach megavolts, but neither have much current to speak of. household current is capable of killing, even at a mere hundreds of volts, partly because it can deliver tens of amperes. yeah, i know, household current is pretty survivable too in the big picture, but let’s not split that hair…)
i wasn’t aware that modern tasers actually modulate the signal to more efficiently contract muscle. that’s actually encouraging; ceteris paribus, that should allow for even lower currents and possibly lower potentials to be used, hence making such tasers safer. whether or not that’s actually being done so is of course another matter…
pacemakers are usually active for long, sustained periods, and should be made as painless as possible. internal defibrillators probably should jolt you enough to be noticeable and unmistakeable; you want to know when they need to kick in, so you can track those events. (making them traumatic would be pointless, of course, unless that’s what it genuinely takes to shock your heart back to work. we’d have to ask a doctor about that, i suppose.) and tasers, in order to do their job, should properly be excruciating — they’re meant to replace firearms, after all. the fact that they’re currently being abused in situations where firearms would not be indicated is a serious problem in itself.