Alright, I don’t love the fact of being wrong, but my mission is to motivate improvements in MRI safety for patients, staff, and providers. I’m not the least bit interested in having the longest list of ‘I told you so’ moments, and I’m uncomfortable when someone applies the term ‘guru’ to me. I am openly, vocally, critical of organizations when I feel that they haven’t lived up to their obligation to reinforce MRI safety standards, so when one of them does well, I can’t tell you how happy I am to eat my prior words, and today is an example of that…
Archive for the ‘Other MRI Safety’ Category
I Love Being Wrong…
Sunday, March 7th, 2010“The Magnetic Elephant In The Room (Or Congressional Hearing Chamber)”
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Here we sit, on the cusp of mandatory accreditation for ‘Advanced Imaging’ modalities at outpatient providers (these are CT, MRI and PET), and a series of articles on medical radiation exposure splashes across the New York Times.
In nearly concurrent moves, the Joint Commission (JC) unveils their just-developed Advanced Imaging (AI) accreditation program, the FDA is clamoring for new authority to regulate medical device safety (or gearing-up to use authority that it’s been hiding for safe-keeping, that isn’t exactly clear to me), the US Congress whips together a set of hearings on the issue, and, at those hearings, the American College of Radiology (ACR) recommends that the Feds expand the scope of the AI accreditation requirement to include radiation therapy and to apply the expanded accreditation requirements to hospitals, too.
Whew, that’s a lot of ground covered for radiology in just the last few weeks! Wait a minute… who is that sitting in the backseat? Who has been drug through all of the hullabaloo about radiation exposure and patient safety without once having been considered, individually? MRI, that’s who.
30% Of Contraindicated Implant Patients Get MRIs Anyway!
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010And what’s even more alarming is that 20% of those implant patients that get MRIs experience some sort of device malfunction afterward! And yet, the dangers of imaging these patients are not well known by the doctors who prescribe these imaging studies.
Click To Learn Just How Many Doctors and Patients Are Ill-Informed Of These Risks…
MRI Projectile Accidents – One Exemplar
Friday, February 19th, 2010How to pick just one when there are a number of alarming, tragic, and needless MRI accidents to choose from? Let’s look at one that we can help the reader better imagine, the case of a pair of flying scissors that had to be surgically removed from a technologist’s forehead…
MRI ‘Finds’ Forceps Left In Surgical Patient
Friday, February 12th, 2010News broke the other day of a nurse in England who was in agony for three months following a routine surgery during which her gall-bladder was removed. Fearing an infection, she was sent for an MRI. Unfortunately, the MRI could not be completed as the magnetic field began torquing the 7-inch pair of forceps that had been left inside her abdomen during the surgery, causing excruciating pain! Click Here For The Follow-Up X-ray And The Rest Of The Story…
Gurney Crashes MRI, Patient Injured, Hospital Fined $50K
Sunday, January 24th, 2010It is the stuff of fabled oral-histories, often dismissed as MRI urban-legend. The patient is wheeled into the MRI room on a gurney that goes flying toward the scanner. “How on Earth could these accidents happen when we know about these risks,” the skeptics question? Almost never does more than a single fragment of information surface about these sorts of accidents and, without verification, nearly all accounts can be erroneously written-off as fiction. Or, that was until enough pieces fell into place to conclusively document a recent episode… Click Here To Read More About MRI Gurney Accidents…
Fear and Clothing In MRI-Land: An MRI Safety Tale
Thursday, January 21st, 2010Near the end of last year I posted an article from an RSNA ‘tip of the day’ regarding external fixation, halo, hardware and ferromagnetic risks. Now, in the first few weeks of 2010 we learn of new MRI safety risks from orthopedic hardware that may be more common than halo systems, scoliosis body braces.
External fixation and braces are typically very carefully screened for contraindication for MRI examination, but what may not be as frequently screened is the clothing underneath. Click Here For The Rest Of The Story…
ThermaCare HeatWrap Dangerous In MRI?
Friday, January 8th, 2010Yesterday I was provided a copy of an anonymized MRI accident / incident report which described how an MRI patient wearing a ThermaCare HeatWrap (something of a self-warming patch for muscle aches) had the wrap pulled off of them by the magnetic attraction of the MRI.
ThermaCare HeatWrap Products Contain Iron And May Be Drawn Into MRI Scanners
Click To Read More About This Incident And How To Prevent Similar Accidents From Occurring…