I am an MRI tech. We do scan many vets who have bullets, shrapnel and other metallic things in the body. The concerns about metal in the body are more to RF induced heating more than the attraction to the magnet. Most shrapnel has enough scar tissue around it that the magnet wont pull it out. Most things that a surgeon puts in your body that may have metal in them is safe mostly because it is not attracted to a magnet, however electronic devices can be hazardous. VP Cheney cannot get near an MRI scanner because the changing magnetic fields could and have killed people with pacemakers. Rush Limbaugh cannot have an MRI scan as long as he has the cochlear implant imbedded in his ear due to magnetically induced currents into a coiled wire could burn him internally. Most metallic implants now a days are MRI safe, as are braces in the teeth. Some of the things implanted many years ago are attracted to the magnet such as aneurysm clips in the brain and a few other things, but MRI techs have a reference book an the contraindications.
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Purposely posted twice so it will be on top portion of posts numbers 101-200.
I was aware that many medical implantable devices these days are nonferrous and therefore not attracted to magnetic force fields.
But I was unaware of the shrapnel question...I would suppose that scanning or not would of course depend some..on the location of the shrapnel in the body, ie: Near some great vessel, or organ....OR in one's butt...
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