Posted on 08/19/2005 6:22:41 AM PDT by OESY
The pictures and stories are the stuff of slapstick: wheelchairs, gurneys and even floor polishers jammed deep inside M.R.I. scanners whose powerful magnets grabbed them from the hands of careless hospital workers.
The police officer whose pistol flew out of his holster and shot a wall as it hit the magnet. The sprinkler repairman whose acetylene tank was yanked inside, breaking its valve and starting a fire that razed the building.
But the bigger picture is anything but funny, medical safety experts say. As the number of magnetic resonance imaging scanners in the country has soared from a handful in 1980 to about 10,000 today, and as magnets have quadrupled in power, careless accidents have become more frequent. Some have caused serious injuries and even death.
No one knows how many have occurred. But the safety experts say there is no doubt they are on the rise, and their growing frequency is prompting widespread calls for more regulation.
Safety guidelines drawn up by the American College of Radiology in 2002 and revised last year "have no teeth and are floating out there in intellectual Never-Never Land," Tobias Gilk, a Kansas City architect who designs medical scanning rooms, said.
He continued: "The X-ray in your dentist's office is more heavily regulated."
Dr. Emanuel Kanal, the lead author of the radiology college's guidelines, said that although he would prefer to see radiologists police themselves, the escalating number of blunders and the indifference of some scanner operators to voluntary rules have convinced him that it would be better if federal or state law mandated them....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There was a report just a few months ago about how a child was killed by an oxygen tank drawn to the machine. Very sad for what I'm sure everyone expected to be a "routine" exam.
Okay, so mount some metal detectors in the room, and hook them up to an interlock on the MRI power.
I made a mistake of standing near one giving comfort to my wife with a pocket knife in my pocket. I thought my pocket was going to get ripped off.
Now just stop it you! Sounding reasonable and smart and offerring good suggestions here will not be tolerated!
"Ah, but can they take chrome off a bumper," thought Monica.
The child was just completing his first post-cancer checkup and his family had high hopes that they'd beaten the disease. Very sad and unnecessary.
Even when the power is shut off the magnets still retain their draw. Article stated that helium needs to be vented to completely take down the magnets and that process takes a while and is dangerous to boot.
Your fault?
Hey big boy, is that a knife in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
Imagine if you had a piercing in the wrong place.....
from the article :
The magnets are never off, even at night, and cutting the electricity will not affect them. They draw most of their power from supercooled helium, which must be vented to shut down the magnet - a process that takes several minutes and has hazards of its own.
having been in and around MRI machines, all I can say is that if you believe this, I have a really nice statue in NY harbor for sale.
anybody check snopes?
So this old, recyled story from last year is what the NYT is printing instead of the Able Danger/9-11 Commission coverup story. They just don't consider those items "fit to print", I guess. Tomorrow it'll be the dangers of eating char-broiled hamburgers, no doubt. Can this paper be any more ridiculous?
I always think of that picture of that guy that keeps popping up here with dozens of piercings and tattoos on his face. Ouch!
The magnet is always on...it costs about $10,000 to power it down and then get it started back up again.
But it's well known what can and cannot go into the room, so this is an issue of pure carelessness. The story another poster had about a child being killed following an oxygen tank is especially sad. It should never have happened.
Yup. No relevant references to MRIs at Snopes.
What part of "it's a really big strong magnet" don't you understand?
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