Ananova:

Trendy Crocs sandals have been banned from hospitals by health chiefs over fears they might cause heart attacks or damage life support machines.

Health Authority safety officers in Austria have warned all staff that the distinctive plastic shoes can generate massive amounts of static electricty.

The electricity can discharge itself directly into patients or short circuit vital medical equipment, says the warning from the Viennese Hospital Authority.

Static discharge could wipe out the computer memories and data processing functions of life-saving equipment, rendering it useless.

Now the city's biggest hospital - SMZ Ost with 2,800 employees - has already banned the shoes from operating theatres and the casualty department.

The soft, vinyl sandals have become a hit with medics, as well as celebrities like Al Pacino and Batman star Morgan Freeman.

But the Viennese Hospital Authority safety spokesman Peter Woelfl said Crocs would stay banned until they could be made anti-static.

"Those sandals can cause an electric shock in organs. They can also lead to crashes of data processing devices," he said.

"We hold a technical opinion which says that those sandals are made of materials which are not antistatic. This means they do not match our safety requirements," he added.

Ernst Widmann, head of Crocs in Austria, said: "This is insane. I haven't heard of a single incident where Crocs caused a critical incident in hospitals."