As an anesthesiologist I routinely gave anesthesia to patients (usually children) undergoing MRIs over a 38-year career.
I never had anxiety in my daily practice in the OR but anesthesia in the MRI suite ALWAYS provoked anxiety because:
1. I had to anesthetize the patient in the sub-basement, two floors below the main OR — where there were always other anesthesiologists able to help in an emergency. In the MRI suite, no one could hear my silent screams if I got in trouble nor were there knowledgeable extra hands to, for example, squeeze the breathing bag if I needed to prepare for an emergency intubation.
2. Once the patient was anesthetized and the heavy door to the MRI machine room was closed and locked, I could only monitor my unconscious patient through a darkened heavy glass window. Sure, I had monitors for EKG and oxygen saturation outside the MRI room, near the control board where technicians operated the machine, but the automatic blood pressure cuff inflator dial on the anesthesia machine was inside the room and hard to see through the dark glass.
3. It was my good fortune to never have had an emergency in the MRI suite, but events such as that reported above in the OP happened from time to time in hospitals throughout the U.S. and were occasionally reported in the anesthesia literature with the expected cautionary advice. Many more events occurred than were reported.
Intellectually, you can think that "If a jet can move a plane, it can move me through space", but you never experience a fan even close to that in real life.
We don't have a sense for detecting 3 Tesla magnets because they don't happen in nature. People can see a tarantula, and, depending on the snake, hear it as well.
But you need to seriously piss off the tarantula for it to engage in a fight with an opponent our size. Most of them are sweet and just want to get on with their tiny lives. They are well aware we are not food. Poisonous snakes, on the other hand, tend to be much less chill. Much like wasps, they seem to enjoy causing pain and suffering.
This doesn't track to me. People have been irrationally afraid of things since the dawn of time, based purely on hearsay (see religion). And surely even the simplest of language serves to warn about unseen dangers.
Entering the MRI room myself I was very familiar with the dangers of bringing metal inside, to the point where I would second guess myself and my own body. "What if my leg bone actually has metal in it for some reason?!"
Both can be true. We learn to fear and respect modern technology because of training and reinforcement that might occur as part of learning.
Consider the “Things I Won’t Work With” column. There is a healthy degree of respect for various compounds that’s learned with experience. This is similar to the way that (properly trained) electricians work with electricity, and nuclear plant techs work around radioactive material.
There are people who flock towards information about technology (probably almost everyone here as well as many in their social circles) and there are people who run from information about technology.
I know people who if you tried to explain an MRI to them, would become visibly uncomfortable and search for any way to change the topic.
To be fair, most people aren't going to know what they means. If anything it's going to sound more like "only 3 huh? That doesn't sound very dangerous." Only 3 miles per hour isn't very fast. Only 3 degrees outside is cold, but it probably won't kill you.
The other side is also true though, "man gets killed by cobra venom" isn't sensational international news because it's an intuitive rational thing we expect to happen. A man getting killed by an MRI machine doesn't fit into our intuition so it gets much more interest than a snake bite.
Calling a 9 kg chain a "necklace" is a bit misleading. It makes it seem like it could have gone in unnoticed. "medical episode" is also very vague, what was the actual cause of death?
Given that the chain drug him across the room, I can imagine that the actual death might be quite grisly - if it can cause a man to be "hurled towards the machine" it's possible it was worse than a mere strangulation, and that sort of detail isn't really required in the article.
That wasn't a necklace, 20lb and a lock isn't jewelry, it's a collar. Probably bdsm, or pup play. It definitely was not jewelry. Also likely iron or steel, which probably made this incident worse.
This was not the sort of "paint the room" liveleak tier accident that a hell of a lot of people seem to want to assume it was.
Per the article, the chain was stupid heavy because it was gym/weight training stuff, he was tossed and pinned to the machine where he suffocated, he died at the hospital.
It’s notable that he was not the patient, he was the patient’s husband who somehow was allowed to enter the room with the MRI machine.
The superconducting magnet in an MRI scanner is always on even when not performing a scan.
This was pure and simple negligence by the MRI operators. Access control is the most basic part of MRI safety!
Even if he was not wearing this “chain”, he never should have been allowed to enter the room. He could’ve been wearing a steel wristwatch, had a keyring in his pocket, etc.
> "I'm saying, 'Could you turn off the machine? Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!'" [pleaded the victim's wife].
The journalist missed a golden opportunity for education here: most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
If people don't know about the magnet, or don't know that it can't be turned off (or perhaps assume it's "off" because the scan was over, as I would guess happened here), accidents happen.
I’m pretty sure when some guy gets sucked into the machine, the downtimes/lawsuits/etc and pressing the emergency button and having a ton of down time is a sunk cost at that point and you are basically obligated to do everytyhing you can to avoid catastrophe to reduce your legal peril.
> most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
I thought these days, most MRIs did have an emergency quench button.
Yeah I would say all modern MRIs do. However one misconception is that loss of field strength is instantanous, it's not. The field strength drops off over about 15s or so as the helium boils off and the magnet losses superconducting properties.
So the emergency quench is less useful than it sounds in these situations... it's very likely if an MRI is going to kill you it's going to do it fast enough for it not to be relevant.
Surely you'd hit the quench button straight away? I cannot imagine policy being "check if the victim is dead, and if not hit the button."
I also wonder what the field decay is like. If it takes 15s and it's linear it's much worse than if it's 15s but decays exponentially. You don't need to field to be gone, you need the field to diminish enough to stop strangling the poor guy.
Takes more than 15sec to strangle someone. 30 shouldn't cause any serious damage beyond whatever mechanical damage there is from being tugged around. Heck, 2-3min is probably fine if the MRI is located at a hospital.
Edit: Per the article that I would like to remind everyone is well worth reading, he had time to say goodbye to his wife, that would seem to me to imply he wasn't tossed hard enough to be incapacitated.
Causing severe head trauma or crushing the trachea can be almost instant. A lot of the more serious MRI related injuries are objects flying across the room and hitting someone, especially over the head.
Figure half that to start since most of the loop is gonna wind up laying flat and only the half of it is prevented from doing so by one's neck. Then maybe cut it by 2/3 again since the sides aren't gonna do a ton of direct squishing. That still leaves you with hundreds of pounds, which roughly aligns with the timeline of suffocation in the article High hundreds low thousand likely would be neck snapping or otherwise instantly incapacitating.
This is already a common practice. One of the issues with the standard implementation is that it’s set up as an administrative control rather than an engineering control (which would be significantly more difficult/expensive/space-consuming). At least one other comment thread has discussed the airlock implementation that I’m sure a very large number of people have independently thought of.
> The superconducting magnet in an MRI scanner is always on even when not performing a scan.
This should be placed on the entrance with big bold letters, I think that a lot of accidents could be avoided by simply providing "WHY" information.
I had MRI scan and I wasn't aware that machine was active even when not performing scan and now after knowing that I think that personnel there was very lax with allowing me to enter the room after instructing me to put metal objects away AND without enough emphasis how dangerous it could be if I forgot to do so.
They do. You'll be hard pressed to find a magnet room without this [0] sign on the door. That said, it's probably not that warning to most people. Fridge magnets are always on too.
Technically he entered "without permission" but at the urging of the patient. Still negligence, though more understable. I wonder if a metal detector that prevents opening the door would help? Perhaps with a big, scary red override button for emergencies?
It seems like there could be a double door situation. Go through the first door, close it. The room detects metal, and only unlocks the door to the MRI if the other door is closed and no metal is in the room.
I’m not sure what kind of emergency would warrant allowing metal to pass through when metal is detected, if there is a risk of death for using it.
A false negative is also dangerous, if the magnet hasn't been quenched. In a case like this, trying to use metal bolt cutters to cut off a necklace or something is just going to compound the disaster if the magnet is still active.
There is (at least according to one episode of _Grey's Anatomy_) a big scary red button to shut down the machine in an emergency, resulting in expensive to restore operation:
The dude suffocated. You don't need anything near "instant" to prevent that.
Edit: Since apparently some people need reminding, per the article he had time to say goodbye to his wife before he lost consciousness, this wasn't some liveleak skull splat type thing.
The chain apparently caused him to be hurled across the room. We don't know how he died, but given the inverse square law, the possibilities are quite grisly.
Most people don't understand the danger of MRI, myself included. I trust the people and follow their directions but I can't really visualize what it would be like to get caught with metal in a MRI magnetic field.
For quoting the article : « According to the US Food and Drug Administration, MRI machines have magnetic fields that will attract magnetic objects of all sizes - keys, mobile phones and even oxygen tanks - which "may cause damage to the scanner or injury to the patient or medical professionals if those objects become projectiles". » the choice of words from both the bbc and the FDA don't really convey the risks.
Anyway there are very surprising issues in what is described : why did the wife needed her husband's help to get help although it is the role of the technicians ? Why was the husband in a place where he was able to hear his wife and not being prepped for MRI ? Why was it possible for him to enter ? And why wasn't the technician able to stop him entering ?
I love this old GE training video around the time of MRI's introduction to the medical market. Even the oldest machines could show some significant power back then.
Watching the scale attached to a pipe wrench pulling some significant weight on a wrench will help show the forces that a 20 pound chain would have made...
(Oh, and stay for the 'old custodian' tale in the intro of this one...)
When that dude got to throw the wrench at the MRI, you know he was having his best day at work ever. I wouldn't be able to be on camera because of giggling.
This is probably the main one. I could completely understand wanting the assistance of a loved one for mundane things like standing up.
Although to your “not prepped for MRI” point, it is kind of wild that someone with a 20 lbs chain around their neck would be allowed even on the same floor as a MRI machine. Although last time I saw one in person, the door to the room did have some pretty blunt warning text in large print.
Last time I went to an MRI, there was a prep room before the MRI machine. There was a stern and visible warning to remove anything metallic from your body before going through the second door. I am fully aware if the pins on my leg were affected, the machine would gladly remove them from my, most likely along with the bone and the leg they are attached to.
A lot of fatal accidents are like that - a series of small mistakes nobody notices, each individually harmless, followed by THAT ONE BIG MISTAKE that ends up killing someone (or a lot of people).
I got to take apart an MRI-safe(ish¹) video projector recently. Turns out it was just a regular DLP projector in an RF shielding box, but all the screws and components on the outside (anything that could be removed) were either plastic, non-magnetic stainless steel, or aluminum. They even converted the stock remote control to be powered with a cable instead of a AA battery (most batteries have steel cases).
They replaced the lens with a very long throw one so the projector could be located far away and bolted to the wall. It still had some steel components inside, but the manual made it very clear you were not supposed to open the case while in the same room with the magnet. No other manual I've read has warnings that trying to change a light bulb could kill you.
¹it was designed to be used within the same room as the MRI, but not to go into the magnet bore itself. You were supposed to securely mount it at a distance where the field strength was less than 100 gauss. Since it still contained steel, there were still warnings all over that "this device may become a projectile" if you got too close to the magnet. Installation must have been a bit nerve wracking!
If it weren't so dangerous, I'd love to pop along to my local tanning salon and get an MRI scan. I've always been quite interested to see an MRI of my brain. Alas, I'm stuck with waiting for some kind of medical testing to need some test subjects to scan, or a university student needing someone to learn to use an MRI on. Or I guess have a head injury serious enough to need an MRI, but that's less desirable
You can volunteer for a study. Check for flyers at your hospital asking for volunteers. (Especially psychiatric institutions - they love brain MRIs for their research.)
In Poland you can get one without doctors referal (for CT you need one because of ionizing radiation exposure), it cost between 100-200$ in normal, reputable hospital (not one like from the street view).
It isn't dangerous as long as you follow the safety protocol. This guy was very unlucky as he was wearing a weight training device made of metal, not just a watch or earring.
That's mostly true, but we're still finding new and interesting ways MRIs can kill people. E.g., non-magnetic metals are often safe, bit there was that guy who had his brain cooked as a spinal implant was the wrong length and focused the RF energy into his head. The additional protocol we developed is that objects can be certified safe for specific MRIs but not for all of them (and that being certified safe for a bigger machine doesn't say anything about safety in the presence of smaller machines).
Yes, they're pretty safe nowadays, but there's a lot of energy that gets dumped into a human body during an MRI, and I'd bet my last nickel that we haven't found every way that can cause problems.
I entered an MRI room once when my wife was getting ready to be scanned. I had a metal Cross pen in my shirt pocket. Although I was 10 feet back, the pen flew out of my pocket, across the room, and stuck to the magnet. It was scary.
Depending on the mass they may have been able to remove it manually. A colleague used to use paperclips to study the field lines, and those had very little force.
It comes to something when Fox News is more informative with background information about signage and safety protocols, and reporting about a technician's warning not to enter, than BBC News is.
Y’know, sometimes people saying you can’t do certain things isn’t them just being an asshole. Physics and biology really doesn’t care what people think…
> She said she had called him into the room after she had a scan on Wednesday.
Part of me wonders why the wife felt empowered to invite her husband, who she knew was wearing a giant metal necklace, into the MRI room after her scan. The hospital would have been very clear with her about the dangers of wearing any metal in the room even when the scanner was not running especially because it's common for women to wear jewelry containing various metals and alloys.
Presumably, the husband would have been part of those conversations as well, and thus, should have refrained from joining her in the room anyway, so he isn't completely absolved of responsibility.
Just force of habit. Being around such forceful magnets is not a daily occurrence so you don't really think about this sort of thing (for both the wife and husband). I can totally see how something like this happens.
I once bought a can of coke and put it in my backpack, then I forgot about it. At the airport a few hours later I went through security and didn't think about it at all. No idea why my bag was selected for a manual check. Until he pulled out the soda can. Big (but harmless) do'h moment. People's brains and memories are just wonky like that sometimes; most people have a few "I'm an idiot" anecdotes like that. Even with training by the way: which is why checklists exists for safety critical stuff. "They have been warned about MRI dangers" is pretty meaningless.
The failure is 100% on the facility for not properly controlling access to the MRI room, and people can just walk in apparently(?) And no, a sign or some briefing doesn't cut it.
This is also a risk for absent-minded staff by the way: I don't think I'm the only person who has walked in the wrong room by accident. Or just a small confusion about whether the MRI is operational. Things like that.
> The hospital would have been very clear with her about the dangers of wearing any metal in the room even when the scanner was not running especially because it's common for women to wear jewelry containing various metals and alloys.
I just got an MRI. No warning about dangers of having any metal in the room was mentioned verbally. Was asked if I had any metal in my body, not told why. I just said no to that question. That was it.
This is international news, which means that this kind of event is extremely rare. People are often pretty dumb, and magnetic metal is common, so that means that the existing precautions are very effective. There's probably room for improvement, but there isn't some blisteringly obvious thing that's been overlooked that would save many lives.
People have always thought they could do anything. If you think this is crazy you should see some of the stuff people have been doing with cars and motorcycles for the last 5 decades.
A tragic anecdote has shaken France recently, when an unsupervised 6-year old entered a NICU, took a premature baby and dropped her on the floor. She died of her injuries a few hours later.
The same questions are being asked: how come anyone can enter a NICU? How could the parents let an unsupervised child roam the hospital? How come no one intervened? The worst part is that other parents had complained about the unsupervised child the day before.
Failures all along... that's often how accidents happen.
I wish there was a solid way to balance the weight of a tragedy (sans the kneejerk human emotional reaction) against the proposed solution.
Freak accidents will always happen, and if mitigation is simple and cheap, we should do it. But as soon as we get into the territory of "NICU doors need to be locked with keycard access" (causing every doctor and nurse to do a badge scan 40-50 times a day) then I think it's ok to have 1 infant death every 50 years globally because of it.
I don't get it how in the world someone can just enter the room when the device is on. Trusting people to read signs and follow the rules is borderline insane. A simple lock mechanism could spare life here.
>> I don't get it how in the world someone can just enter the room when the device is on.
The magnet is always on. His wife was in the room. Unless you're previously aware of the dangers of an MRI machine it looks like any other exam room with some equipment in it. It's up to the staff to inform and keep people out and enforce that. IMHO he should not have even been in the outer room wearing a chain like that.
Interesting that he didn't feel gradual increase of pull force while he was approaching the MRI machine.
I guess cubic growth (?) changes from mild to dangerous so quickly when walking towards a MRI machine that once you realize what happening it's already too late.
> Interesting that he didn't feel gradual increase of pull force while he was approaching the MRI machine.
There isn't a gradual increase in pull when magnets are involved. My wife used to work for a company whose product involved powerful magnets. For a while they produced a demo kit in which a magnet would hold a large ball-bearing levitated against gravity. That thing was lethal. If the ball-bearing approached the magnet too closely it instantly became a dangerously fast finger-crushing hammer.
No, for "a magnet" it's an inverse cube law. I've often wondered if the force holding a nucleus together is really magnetism. No, physicists you don't need to correct me, I know how off the wall that sounds ;-)
Ah, yes, I was assuming it was essentially like any other electromagnetic force, but apparently it being a dipole messes with things and it's inverse cube. TIL
Entering the room without permission and wearing a 20lb weight training chain ... I look forward to my next visit where they ask me if I've got some weight training equipment on me.
The real story here is that breakaway connectors exist and yet are still not used.
While the MRI angle makes it "newsworthy," there are many ways in which a chain might be caught and cause injury if it does not disconnect at a lower energy level than the minimum amount of injury the wearer is willing to accept.
> In 2001, a six-year-old boy died of a fractured skull at a New York City medical centre while undergoing an MRI exam after its powerful magnetic force propelled an oxygen tank across the room.
There shouldn't exist any metals in the room (that are not the machine itself), period. The smallest metallic object can fly off like a bullet. Everything and everyone that enters the room should be required to be scanned with a handheld metal detector.
It’s wild that the bottleneck keeping us from buying more MRI machines, achieving economies of scale for a no-radiation way of viewing soft tissues in high resolution, is supposedly the specialized technicians, and here we had a technician who couldn’t manage to turn it off in time when something went wrong, and apparently didn’t keep metal objects out of the room. (We use metal detectors any time you walk into a sporting event, why not an MRI room?)
I expect this story to be promoted by people who benefit from sales of x-ray / CT machines though. MRIs and all of their promise for public health could continue to be set back.
You can't turn it off, it's a static magnet with hundreds of amps flowing in a closed loop in a giant superconducting coil. The usual comparison is that a charged magnet has the same kinetic energy as a loaded 747 coming in to land. To "turn it off" you can bring it above superconducting temp, dissipate all that power as heat, and boil off thousands of liters of helium (fun fact, they usually have ducts to outside for this so everyone doesn't suffocate during a quench). Which might have happened in this case due to physical damage to the magnet, but is not as easy as flicking a switch and having it be "off".
A magnet yanking a chain around your neck isn't going to slowly suffocate you either. It's going to instantly crush your trachea and maybe your spinal chord, like a drop from a hanging.
> The usual comparison is that a charged magnet has the same kinetic energy as a loaded 747 coming in to land
So once you divide by the "lying to people allegedly for their own good and trading away credibility in the process" factor what does that come out to? A semi truck at highway speeds? Those can stop in under 10sec.
It isn't a binary like that with the MRI though. If it stops strangling you in 10sec you're great, 15 you're fine, 20 you need to be woken back up.
Edit: Per the article that you have all supposedly read, he wasn't instantly incapacitated. He was pinned onto/into the machine with enough weight on him that he suffocated over seconds and ultimately died at the hospital. This would have been a "close call" with an E-stop.
I don't know, I imagine getting suddenly jerked across the room by your neck is not a slow and gentle strangulation event. In addition, as I understand it, currents can be induced in metal objects causing them to heat up. So no, I'm not sure that 15 seconds of violent burning strangulation of an elderly individual is fine. It's not clear this fellow died from strangulation.
Okay, this sounds more serious than I thought. But then, why was someone able to walk into that room with metal around their neck if it was clearly so life-threatening?
Anyway, I’m complaining as someone who personally has turned down recommended medical procedures after checking radiation cancer risk numbers and realizing the radiation risk was being downplayed. When I saw the numbers, to me the cancer risk wasn’t worth it, so I went without a solution to my health problem. Had an MRI been an option, I would have more likely said yes.
> But then, why was someone able to walk into that room with metal around their neck if it was clearly so life-threatening?
Take a look at the Google Street View link someone posted. It's pretty clear this facility -shouldn't- have been able to acquire an MRI machine in the first place.
It also elucidates how such an accident could happen, i.e they clearly don't have the trained staff and protocols necessary given the danger of an MRI machine.
It's very likely the poor gentleman didn't understand the immense danger the machine poses.
They are expensive and rare for a reason IMO. Yes it would be great to have more of them but the best place for more of them is within proper hospitals and leveraging economies of scale to share technicians across a fleet of them in a well run facility.
You got the MRI magnet dissipation-time completely wrong, but it hasn't influenced your opinion on the radiation risk in other similarly sophisticated equipment that could save your life?
A hasty incorrect assumption that I revised on new information is obviously not the same as hard data on radiation doses and cancer implications considered over weeks.
The “could save my life” odds were not very clear and the risk of cancer for that radiation dose had been long ago quantified by scientists, though without considering the immunosuppressants I was taking at the time that elevate cancer risks, making those rates more of a best-case scenario than something to count on. Above all else, the number known to the healthcare facility was the dollar amount to bill to my insurance, with the facility receiving nothing but money in exchange for taking those risks with patients’ lives.
For reference, in exchange for 10 mSv of radiation, a moderate dosage for a CT scan, the cancer risk for a young adult is something like 1/1000 over the course of their life. This means that out of every 1000 young adults who receive a 10 mSv CT scan, 1 would go on to get cancer they otherwise would not have gotten, assuming those 1000 aren’t already at higher risk of dying sooner (this assumption is important to weigh but is not straightforward). Those odds sound low, but if there was a revolver with 1000 chambers and one bullet, would you play Russian roulette with that if your life wasn’t on the line? The risk of cancer for the same radiation dose is much higher for children.
A technically clear answer to this is to use MRIs wherever practical, and to make MRIs more practical as much as we can. Why accept 10 mSv of radiation when you could just do an MRI instead? We should be making MRIs more and more practical. I’m concerned about the potential fear-mongering over times like this one when the facility fails to perform an MRI safely, where the impression people get could be that MRIs are dangerous, when the hazard was really the facility doing a bad job. By contrast, a perfectly performed CT scan will deliver a known radiation dose to the patient every time.
As an anesthesiologist I routinely gave anesthesia to patients (usually children) undergoing MRIs over a 38-year career.
I never had anxiety in my daily practice in the OR but anesthesia in the MRI suite ALWAYS provoked anxiety because:
1. I had to anesthetize the patient in the sub-basement, two floors below the main OR — where there were always other anesthesiologists able to help in an emergency. In the MRI suite, no one could hear my silent screams if I got in trouble nor were there knowledgeable extra hands to, for example, squeeze the breathing bag if I needed to prepare for an emergency intubation.
2. Once the patient was anesthetized and the heavy door to the MRI machine room was closed and locked, I could only monitor my unconscious patient through a darkened heavy glass window. Sure, I had monitors for EKG and oxygen saturation outside the MRI room, near the control board where technicians operated the machine, but the automatic blood pressure cuff inflator dial on the anesthesia machine was inside the room and hard to see through the dark glass.
3. It was my good fortune to never have had an emergency in the MRI suite, but events such as that reported above in the OP happened from time to time in hospitals throughout the U.S. and were occasionally reported in the anesthesia literature with the expected cautionary advice. Many more events occurred than were reported.
>I routinely gave anesthesia to patients
benzodiazepines?
Why darkened glass?
We didn't evolve to have the warning mechanisms for modern life.
Tell a person there's a tarantula or a cobra in the next room and not a second will go by without them being deeply aware of this information.
Tell them it's a 3 tesla magnetic field and they'll run in carrying a piece of sheet metal and a pocket full of ball bearings.
Similarly: https://www.fox5ny.com/news/courtney-edwards-piedmont-airlin...
Intellectually, you can think that "If a jet can move a plane, it can move me through space", but you never experience a fan even close to that in real life.
We don't have a sense for detecting 3 Tesla magnets because they don't happen in nature. People can see a tarantula, and, depending on the snake, hear it as well.
But you need to seriously piss off the tarantula for it to engage in a fight with an opponent our size. Most of them are sweet and just want to get on with their tiny lives. They are well aware we are not food. Poisonous snakes, on the other hand, tend to be much less chill. Much like wasps, they seem to enjoy causing pain and suffering.
This doesn't track to me. People have been irrationally afraid of things since the dawn of time, based purely on hearsay (see religion). And surely even the simplest of language serves to warn about unseen dangers.
Entering the MRI room myself I was very familiar with the dangers of bringing metal inside, to the point where I would second guess myself and my own body. "What if my leg bone actually has metal in it for some reason?!"
Both can be true. We learn to fear and respect modern technology because of training and reinforcement that might occur as part of learning.
Consider the “Things I Won’t Work With” column. There is a healthy degree of respect for various compounds that’s learned with experience. This is similar to the way that (properly trained) electricians work with electricity, and nuclear plant techs work around radioactive material.
There are people who flock towards information about technology (probably almost everyone here as well as many in their social circles) and there are people who run from information about technology.
I know people who if you tried to explain an MRI to them, would become visibly uncomfortable and search for any way to change the topic.
> "What if my leg bone actually has metal in it for some reason?!"
I had that constant thought for the 15 minutes of my knee MRI (except s/leg bone/body/). Most discombobulating.
[delayed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
To be fair, most people aren't going to know what they means. If anything it's going to sound more like "only 3 huh? That doesn't sound very dangerous." Only 3 miles per hour isn't very fast. Only 3 degrees outside is cold, but it probably won't kill you.
30,000 gauss sounds a lot scarier.
Not to mention that "gauss" sounds deadlier than "tesla" to begin with. Talking about choosing the right units.
The other side is also true though, "man gets killed by cobra venom" isn't sensational international news because it's an intuitive rational thing we expect to happen. A man getting killed by an MRI machine doesn't fit into our intuition so it gets much more interest than a snake bite.
And yet, Koreans are afraid of fans.
Honestly yeah, why do you need your "workout chain" while taking your wife to a medical exam?
Sounds like Darwin Awards material
I'd make sure to look into life insurance and abuse complains.
Calling a 9 kg chain a "necklace" is a bit misleading. It makes it seem like it could have gone in unnoticed. "medical episode" is also very vague, what was the actual cause of death?
Given that the chain drug him across the room, I can imagine that the actual death might be quite grisly - if it can cause a man to be "hurled towards the machine" it's possible it was worse than a mere strangulation, and that sort of detail isn't really required in the article.
That wasn't a necklace, 20lb and a lock isn't jewelry, it's a collar. Probably bdsm, or pup play. It definitely was not jewelry. Also likely iron or steel, which probably made this incident worse.
Someone said it was a strength training thing, some crossfit cult thing of carrying heavy crap around your neck.
Very likely severed spinal column, if not complete decapitation.
According to other articles I've read, multiple heart attacks.
[delayed]
This was not the sort of "paint the room" liveleak tier accident that a hell of a lot of people seem to want to assume it was.
Per the article, the chain was stupid heavy because it was gym/weight training stuff, he was tossed and pinned to the machine where he suffocated, he died at the hospital.
It’s notable that he was not the patient, he was the patient’s husband who somehow was allowed to enter the room with the MRI machine.
The superconducting magnet in an MRI scanner is always on even when not performing a scan.
This was pure and simple negligence by the MRI operators. Access control is the most basic part of MRI safety!
Even if he was not wearing this “chain”, he never should have been allowed to enter the room. He could’ve been wearing a steel wristwatch, had a keyring in his pocket, etc.
> "I'm saying, 'Could you turn off the machine? Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!'" [pleaded the victim's wife].
The journalist missed a golden opportunity for education here: most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
If people don't know about the magnet, or don't know that it can't be turned off (or perhaps assume it's "off" because the scan was over, as I would guess happened here), accidents happen.
> For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium
In this case, they were going to have to do that anyway. Might as well shut it down right away.
I’m pretty sure when some guy gets sucked into the machine, the downtimes/lawsuits/etc and pressing the emergency button and having a ton of down time is a sunk cost at that point and you are basically obligated to do everytyhing you can to avoid catastrophe to reduce your legal peril.
> most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
I thought these days, most MRIs did have an emergency quench button.
Yeah I would say all modern MRIs do. However one misconception is that loss of field strength is instantanous, it's not. The field strength drops off over about 15s or so as the helium boils off and the magnet losses superconducting properties.
So the emergency quench is less useful than it sounds in these situations... it's very likely if an MRI is going to kill you it's going to do it fast enough for it not to be relevant.
Surely you'd hit the quench button straight away? I cannot imagine policy being "check if the victim is dead, and if not hit the button."
I also wonder what the field decay is like. If it takes 15s and it's linear it's much worse than if it's 15s but decays exponentially. You don't need to field to be gone, you need the field to diminish enough to stop strangling the poor guy.
Takes more than 15sec to strangle someone. 30 shouldn't cause any serious damage beyond whatever mechanical damage there is from being tugged around. Heck, 2-3min is probably fine if the MRI is located at a hospital.
Edit: Per the article that I would like to remind everyone is well worth reading, he had time to say goodbye to his wife, that would seem to me to imply he wasn't tossed hard enough to be incapacitated.
strangle? dude's neck was probably crushed. if I had to guess this was a near decapitation, not a strangling.
Causing severe head trauma or crushing the trachea can be almost instant. A lot of the more serious MRI related injuries are objects flying across the room and hitting someone, especially over the head.
In this case, he died after being removed from the machine and taken to a hospital.
The damage was likely done almost immediately; a heavy 20 pound "necklace" is going to apply a lot of crushing force.
And for the other readers: It wouldn’t be applying twenty pounds of force, it would be applying…
My rule of thumb calculation came to 3,000 lbf, which seems like a lot, but perhaps that’s actually accurate.
Seems spot on to me.
Figure half that to start since most of the loop is gonna wind up laying flat and only the half of it is prevented from doing so by one's neck. Then maybe cut it by 2/3 again since the sides aren't gonna do a ton of direct squishing. That still leaves you with hundreds of pounds, which roughly aligns with the timeline of suffocation in the article High hundreds low thousand likely would be neck snapping or otherwise instantly incapacitating.
How hard is it to gate the patient entrance to the MRI with a big-ass metal detector turned up to 11? Why is this still a problem?
This is already a common practice. One of the issues with the standard implementation is that it’s set up as an administrative control rather than an engineering control (which would be significantly more difficult/expensive/space-consuming). At least one other comment thread has discussed the airlock implementation that I’m sure a very large number of people have independently thought of.
Or gate it, period - nobody should get in that easily.
I wonder if that's a problem in case a medical intervention is required.
> The superconducting magnet in an MRI scanner is always on even when not performing a scan.
This should be placed on the entrance with big bold letters, I think that a lot of accidents could be avoided by simply providing "WHY" information. I had MRI scan and I wasn't aware that machine was active even when not performing scan and now after knowing that I think that personnel there was very lax with allowing me to enter the room after instructing me to put metal objects away AND without enough emphasis how dangerous it could be if I forgot to do so.
They do. You'll be hard pressed to find a magnet room without this [0] sign on the door. That said, it's probably not that warning to most people. Fridge magnets are always on too.
0 - https://www.zzmedical.com/exclusives/mri-warning-wall-sign-m...
Technically he entered "without permission" but at the urging of the patient. Still negligence, though more understable. I wonder if a metal detector that prevents opening the door would help? Perhaps with a big, scary red override button for emergencies?
It seems like there could be a double door situation. Go through the first door, close it. The room detects metal, and only unlocks the door to the MRI if the other door is closed and no metal is in the room.
I’m not sure what kind of emergency would warrant allowing metal to pass through when metal is detected, if there is a risk of death for using it.
> I’m not sure what kind of emergency would warrant allowing metal to pass through when metal is detected, if there is a risk of death for using it.
The risk would be in the false positive during an emergency situation.
A false negative is also dangerous, if the magnet hasn't been quenched. In a case like this, trying to use metal bolt cutters to cut off a necklace or something is just going to compound the disaster if the magnet is still active.
There is (at least according to one episode of _Grey's Anatomy_) a big scary red button to shut down the machine in an emergency, resulting in expensive to restore operation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m9algh/e...
According to the above post, it's a venting of the liquid helium, which requires ~$25,000 to replace).
We’re talking about a human life here. Fuck the balance and vent immediately!
There is some consideration for other patients who may die due to not getting an MRI in the meantime
They gonna to get an MRI while the guys corpse is stuck to the machine?
Again, it isn't an instant-off button.
Only good for removal of any metal-adorn victims and unintended metallic objects ...
The dude suffocated. You don't need anything near "instant" to prevent that.
Edit: Since apparently some people need reminding, per the article he had time to say goodbye to his wife before he lost consciousness, this wasn't some liveleak skull splat type thing.
The chain apparently caused him to be hurled across the room. We don't know how he died, but given the inverse square law, the possibilities are quite grisly.
He was wearing a twenty pound necklace. In a magnetic field that strong? His throat was crushed, likely instantly.
Do you have a source for that? The BBC just says "a medical episode" of which he died later.
Multiple heart attacks.
A normal necklace wouldn't cause such an accident no? This was a heavy workout chain, a bizarre item to wear when going to a hospital
Feels like a midlife crises gone awry.
More likely to end up with a burn mark in the shape of the necklace.
Most people don't understand the danger of MRI, myself included. I trust the people and follow their directions but I can't really visualize what it would be like to get caught with metal in a MRI magnetic field.
For quoting the article : « According to the US Food and Drug Administration, MRI machines have magnetic fields that will attract magnetic objects of all sizes - keys, mobile phones and even oxygen tanks - which "may cause damage to the scanner or injury to the patient or medical professionals if those objects become projectiles". » the choice of words from both the bbc and the FDA don't really convey the risks.
Anyway there are very surprising issues in what is described : why did the wife needed her husband's help to get help although it is the role of the technicians ? Why was the husband in a place where he was able to hear his wife and not being prepped for MRI ? Why was it possible for him to enter ? And why wasn't the technician able to stop him entering ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJ9oqmkItI
I love this old GE training video around the time of MRI's introduction to the medical market. Even the oldest machines could show some significant power back then.
Watching the scale attached to a pipe wrench pulling some significant weight on a wrench will help show the forces that a 20 pound chain would have made...
(Oh, and stay for the 'old custodian' tale in the intro of this one...)
When that dude got to throw the wrench at the MRI, you know he was having his best day at work ever. I wouldn't be able to be on camera because of giggling.
The flying wrenches remind me of the Gravity gun i Half-Life 2 :D
> Why was it possible for him to enter?
This is probably the main one. I could completely understand wanting the assistance of a loved one for mundane things like standing up.
Although to your “not prepped for MRI” point, it is kind of wild that someone with a 20 lbs chain around their neck would be allowed even on the same floor as a MRI machine. Although last time I saw one in person, the door to the room did have some pretty blunt warning text in large print.
Last time I went to an MRI, there was a prep room before the MRI machine. There was a stern and visible warning to remove anything metallic from your body before going through the second door. I am fully aware if the pins on my leg were affected, the machine would gladly remove them from my, most likely along with the bone and the leg they are attached to.
A lot of fatal accidents are like that - a series of small mistakes nobody notices, each individually harmless, followed by THAT ONE BIG MISTAKE that ends up killing someone (or a lot of people).
That huge chain though.
People with 10kg chains around their neck might not be the kind of people that you can tell no to.
Mr. T seems like he'd be quite reasonable if you were discussing medical safety procedures.
You would think a simple metal detector to go through before the lock on the MRI room door unlocks would be a requirement.
I guess maybe the MRI machine might interfere with metal detecting?
Nope, metal detectors are fairly typical for MRI access. They just generally aren’t set up as an engineering control like you suggest.
I got to take apart an MRI-safe(ish¹) video projector recently. Turns out it was just a regular DLP projector in an RF shielding box, but all the screws and components on the outside (anything that could be removed) were either plastic, non-magnetic stainless steel, or aluminum. They even converted the stock remote control to be powered with a cable instead of a AA battery (most batteries have steel cases).
They replaced the lens with a very long throw one so the projector could be located far away and bolted to the wall. It still had some steel components inside, but the manual made it very clear you were not supposed to open the case while in the same room with the magnet. No other manual I've read has warnings that trying to change a light bulb could kill you.
¹it was designed to be used within the same room as the MRI, but not to go into the magnet bore itself. You were supposed to securely mount it at a distance where the field strength was less than 100 gauss. Since it still contained steel, there were still warnings all over that "this device may become a projectile" if you got too close to the magnet. Installation must have been a bit nerve wracking!
Google Street view of the facility:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6ssyJfjVn1fUGaG2A
I was wondering "why would the street view be relevant?"
Turns out, it's pretty relevant to the situation - especially how the unauthorized access was possible.
This wasn't your typical hospital MRI. This is basically your local tanning salon that somehow acquired an MRI machine.
If it weren't so dangerous, I'd love to pop along to my local tanning salon and get an MRI scan. I've always been quite interested to see an MRI of my brain. Alas, I'm stuck with waiting for some kind of medical testing to need some test subjects to scan, or a university student needing someone to learn to use an MRI on. Or I guess have a head injury serious enough to need an MRI, but that's less desirable
You can volunteer for a study. Check for flyers at your hospital asking for volunteers. (Especially psychiatric institutions - they love brain MRIs for their research.)
Yeah, hopefully someone will want to do a study on autism, adhd, trans women or all of the above
In Poland you can get one without doctors referal (for CT you need one because of ionizing radiation exposure), it cost between 100-200$ in normal, reputable hospital (not one like from the street view).
Sadly that's a little too far for me to pop over for a day
Nice to be on a country where these facilities are not overwhelmed
Which I wouldn’t assume based on an HN post.
It isn't dangerous as long as you follow the safety protocol. This guy was very unlucky as he was wearing a weight training device made of metal, not just a watch or earring.
That's mostly true, but we're still finding new and interesting ways MRIs can kill people. E.g., non-magnetic metals are often safe, bit there was that guy who had his brain cooked as a spinal implant was the wrong length and focused the RF energy into his head. The additional protocol we developed is that objects can be certified safe for specific MRIs but not for all of them (and that being certified safe for a bigger machine doesn't say anything about safety in the presence of smaller machines).
Yes, they're pretty safe nowadays, but there's a lot of energy that gets dumped into a human body during an MRI, and I'd bet my last nickel that we haven't found every way that can cause problems.
I would prefer to have a trained professional operating my MRI scanner as opposed to someone who read the manual for 10 mins
I wasn't going to click that link but now I have and honestly - that is mildly terrifying.
I don't understand how such a dangerous machine can end up in a place that looks like that.
That size of building is relatively normal for a non-hospital MRI facility.
I wonder if you could take a walk around that building and see a compass needle move.
I have only been to MRI in hospitals but it looks shady as fuck
"Open MRI" - how appropriate. Too open MRI even.
I entered an MRI room once when my wife was getting ready to be scanned. I had a metal Cross pen in my shirt pocket. Although I was 10 feet back, the pen flew out of my pocket, across the room, and stuck to the magnet. It was scary.
That's crazy... Did they bill you for the cost of shutting down the MRI and refilling the helium?
Depending on the mass they may have been able to remove it manually. A colleague used to use paperclips to study the field lines, and those had very little force.
They probably left it until the next maintenance cycle. Nobody wants the downtime.
Wouldn't that cause heavy distortion in the image though?
It comes to something when Fox News is more informative with background information about signage and safety protocols, and reporting about a technician's warning not to enter, than BBC News is.
* https://fox5ny.com/news/long-island-mri-freak-accident
(Many U.S.A. news services do a better job than BBC News does on U.S.A. stories. But this is the BBC being beaten by Fox, specificially.)
That's reporting by the local affiliate, not the Fox News.
There are multiple different Fox News services under similar names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNYW#News_operation Fox 5 NY seems that it used to notably be a trailblazer
Y’know, sometimes people saying you can’t do certain things isn’t them just being an asshole. Physics and biology really doesn’t care what people think…
Nobody should be able to get into that room that isn't supposed to be there.
Also, twenty pound necklace?
"She said he was wearing a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training."
In addition to that:
> She said she had called him into the room after she had a scan on Wednesday.
Part of me wonders why the wife felt empowered to invite her husband, who she knew was wearing a giant metal necklace, into the MRI room after her scan. The hospital would have been very clear with her about the dangers of wearing any metal in the room even when the scanner was not running especially because it's common for women to wear jewelry containing various metals and alloys.
Presumably, the husband would have been part of those conversations as well, and thus, should have refrained from joining her in the room anyway, so he isn't completely absolved of responsibility.
It seems there's plenty of blame to go around.
Just force of habit. Being around such forceful magnets is not a daily occurrence so you don't really think about this sort of thing (for both the wife and husband). I can totally see how something like this happens.
I once bought a can of coke and put it in my backpack, then I forgot about it. At the airport a few hours later I went through security and didn't think about it at all. No idea why my bag was selected for a manual check. Until he pulled out the soda can. Big (but harmless) do'h moment. People's brains and memories are just wonky like that sometimes; most people have a few "I'm an idiot" anecdotes like that. Even with training by the way: which is why checklists exists for safety critical stuff. "They have been warned about MRI dangers" is pretty meaningless.
The failure is 100% on the facility for not properly controlling access to the MRI room, and people can just walk in apparently(?) And no, a sign or some briefing doesn't cut it.
This is also a risk for absent-minded staff by the way: I don't think I'm the only person who has walked in the wrong room by accident. Or just a small confusion about whether the MRI is operational. Things like that.
> The hospital would have been very clear with her about the dangers of wearing any metal in the room even when the scanner was not running especially because it's common for women to wear jewelry containing various metals and alloys.
It was not in a hospital: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44630969
You say "hospital" but this was basically an amateur run MRI salon as far as I can tell.
I just got an MRI. No warning about dangers of having any metal in the room was mentioned verbally. Was asked if I had any metal in my body, not told why. I just said no to that question. That was it.
Most people included myself don't realize the risks of a MRI
> she was getting an MRI on her knee and asked her husband to come in to help her get up afterwards
Lots of "why don't they..." comments here.
This is international news, which means that this kind of event is extremely rare. People are often pretty dumb, and magnetic metal is common, so that means that the existing precautions are very effective. There's probably room for improvement, but there isn't some blisteringly obvious thing that's been overlooked that would save many lives.
"The man entered a room at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, on New York's Long Island, without permission as the MRI machine was running..."
People think they can do anything they want nowadays.
People have always thought they could do anything. If you think this is crazy you should see some of the stuff people have been doing with cars and motorcycles for the last 5 decades.
A tragic anecdote has shaken France recently, when an unsupervised 6-year old entered a NICU, took a premature baby and dropped her on the floor. She died of her injuries a few hours later.
The same questions are being asked: how come anyone can enter a NICU? How could the parents let an unsupervised child roam the hospital? How come no one intervened? The worst part is that other parents had complained about the unsupervised child the day before.
Failures all along... that's often how accidents happen.
I wish there was a solid way to balance the weight of a tragedy (sans the kneejerk human emotional reaction) against the proposed solution.
Freak accidents will always happen, and if mitigation is simple and cheap, we should do it. But as soon as we get into the territory of "NICU doors need to be locked with keycard access" (causing every doctor and nurse to do a badge scan 40-50 times a day) then I think it's ok to have 1 infant death every 50 years globally because of it.
I don't get it how in the world someone can just enter the room when the device is on. Trusting people to read signs and follow the rules is borderline insane. A simple lock mechanism could spare life here.
>> I don't get it how in the world someone can just enter the room when the device is on.
The magnet is always on. His wife was in the room. Unless you're previously aware of the dangers of an MRI machine it looks like any other exam room with some equipment in it. It's up to the staff to inform and keep people out and enforce that. IMHO he should not have even been in the outer room wearing a chain like that.
While wearing "a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training."
It's literally like reading a guide "How to kill yourself with an MRI machine" and following it step by step
Step 1: Affix excessively large metallic decapitation device.
Step 2: Lock metallic decapitation device in place.
Related:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfmaude/d...
Interesting that he didn't feel gradual increase of pull force while he was approaching the MRI machine.
I guess cubic growth (?) changes from mild to dangerous so quickly when walking towards a MRI machine that once you realize what happening it's already too late.
> Interesting that he didn't feel gradual increase of pull force while he was approaching the MRI machine.
There isn't a gradual increase in pull when magnets are involved. My wife used to work for a company whose product involved powerful magnets. For a while they produced a demo kit in which a magnet would hold a large ball-bearing levitated against gravity. That thing was lethal. If the ball-bearing approached the magnet too closely it instantly became a dangerously fast finger-crushing hammer.
I think it's inverse-square, and as you get closer, the acceleration increases quadratically, so your speed increases faster (possibly cubic?)
>> I think it's inverse-square
No, for "a magnet" it's an inverse cube law. I've often wondered if the force holding a nucleus together is really magnetism. No, physicists you don't need to correct me, I know how off the wall that sounds ;-)
Ah, yes, I was assuming it was essentially like any other electromagnetic force, but apparently it being a dipole messes with things and it's inverse cube. TIL
Entering the room without permission and wearing a 20lb weight training chain ... I look forward to my next visit where they ask me if I've got some weight training equipment on me.
Caution! This coffee is hot. Avoid pouring on crotch area.
Do yourself a favour and actually read about that incident.
I have read about it and still can't see how mcdonalds lost.
I like to post this whenever the danger MRI magnetic field strength comes into question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg
Good to know the Final Destination series was not exaggerating on the hazards of MRIs.
The real story here is that breakaway connectors exist and yet are still not used.
While the MRI angle makes it "newsworthy," there are many ways in which a chain might be caught and cause injury if it does not disconnect at a lower energy level than the minimum amount of injury the wearer is willing to accept.
The incident with the child seems worse:
> In 2001, a six-year-old boy died of a fractured skull at a New York City medical centre while undergoing an MRI exam after its powerful magnetic force propelled an oxygen tank across the room.
There shouldn't exist any metals in the room (that are not the machine itself), period. The smallest metallic object can fly off like a bullet. Everything and everyone that enters the room should be required to be scanned with a handheld metal detector.
First class candidate for the Darwin Awards.
It's awful to say, but sometimes it's interesting to see natural selection at work.
>without permission
How is that possible ? I would think at the very least the door would be locked.
From quick searches I believe it is a for profit company.
https://opennpi.com/provider/1851878409
Granted that probably does not matter, but to me, for profit generally means cut costs, even safety costs to maximize profits.
> She said he was wearing a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training.
Um, ok.
[dead]
It’s wild that the bottleneck keeping us from buying more MRI machines, achieving economies of scale for a no-radiation way of viewing soft tissues in high resolution, is supposedly the specialized technicians, and here we had a technician who couldn’t manage to turn it off in time when something went wrong, and apparently didn’t keep metal objects out of the room. (We use metal detectors any time you walk into a sporting event, why not an MRI room?)
I expect this story to be promoted by people who benefit from sales of x-ray / CT machines though. MRIs and all of their promise for public health could continue to be set back.
You can't turn it off, it's a static magnet with hundreds of amps flowing in a closed loop in a giant superconducting coil. The usual comparison is that a charged magnet has the same kinetic energy as a loaded 747 coming in to land. To "turn it off" you can bring it above superconducting temp, dissipate all that power as heat, and boil off thousands of liters of helium (fun fact, they usually have ducts to outside for this so everyone doesn't suffocate during a quench). Which might have happened in this case due to physical damage to the magnet, but is not as easy as flicking a switch and having it be "off".
A magnet yanking a chain around your neck isn't going to slowly suffocate you either. It's going to instantly crush your trachea and maybe your spinal chord, like a drop from a hanging.
> The usual comparison is that a charged magnet has the same kinetic energy as a loaded 747 coming in to land
So once you divide by the "lying to people allegedly for their own good and trading away credibility in the process" factor what does that come out to? A semi truck at highway speeds? Those can stop in under 10sec.
If you get hit by a semi truck at highway speeds it could stop one second later and you'd still be in pretty rough shape.
It isn't a binary like that with the MRI though. If it stops strangling you in 10sec you're great, 15 you're fine, 20 you need to be woken back up.
Edit: Per the article that you have all supposedly read, he wasn't instantly incapacitated. He was pinned onto/into the machine with enough weight on him that he suffocated over seconds and ultimately died at the hospital. This would have been a "close call" with an E-stop.
That necklace would have been stuck to the magnet with a force around 3,000 pounds.
Strangulation is one thing, but his throat was crushed; there’s no way around it. That’s not survivable no matter how quickly you’re released.
I don't know, I imagine getting suddenly jerked across the room by your neck is not a slow and gentle strangulation event. In addition, as I understand it, currents can be induced in metal objects causing them to heat up. So no, I'm not sure that 15 seconds of violent burning strangulation of an elderly individual is fine. It's not clear this fellow died from strangulation.
Okay, this sounds more serious than I thought. But then, why was someone able to walk into that room with metal around their neck if it was clearly so life-threatening?
Anyway, I’m complaining as someone who personally has turned down recommended medical procedures after checking radiation cancer risk numbers and realizing the radiation risk was being downplayed. When I saw the numbers, to me the cancer risk wasn’t worth it, so I went without a solution to my health problem. Had an MRI been an option, I would have more likely said yes.
> But then, why was someone able to walk into that room with metal around their neck if it was clearly so life-threatening?
Take a look at the Google Street View link someone posted. It's pretty clear this facility -shouldn't- have been able to acquire an MRI machine in the first place.
It also elucidates how such an accident could happen, i.e they clearly don't have the trained staff and protocols necessary given the danger of an MRI machine. It's very likely the poor gentleman didn't understand the immense danger the machine poses.
They are expensive and rare for a reason IMO. Yes it would be great to have more of them but the best place for more of them is within proper hospitals and leveraging economies of scale to share technicians across a fleet of them in a well run facility.
> But then, why was someone able to walk into that room with metal around their neck if it was clearly so life-threatening?
They shouldn't have been, it's a major failure of access control.
You got the MRI magnet dissipation-time completely wrong, but it hasn't influenced your opinion on the radiation risk in other similarly sophisticated equipment that could save your life?
Astonishing.
A hasty incorrect assumption that I revised on new information is obviously not the same as hard data on radiation doses and cancer implications considered over weeks.
The “could save my life” odds were not very clear and the risk of cancer for that radiation dose had been long ago quantified by scientists, though without considering the immunosuppressants I was taking at the time that elevate cancer risks, making those rates more of a best-case scenario than something to count on. Above all else, the number known to the healthcare facility was the dollar amount to bill to my insurance, with the facility receiving nothing but money in exchange for taking those risks with patients’ lives.
For reference, in exchange for 10 mSv of radiation, a moderate dosage for a CT scan, the cancer risk for a young adult is something like 1/1000 over the course of their life. This means that out of every 1000 young adults who receive a 10 mSv CT scan, 1 would go on to get cancer they otherwise would not have gotten, assuming those 1000 aren’t already at higher risk of dying sooner (this assumption is important to weigh but is not straightforward). Those odds sound low, but if there was a revolver with 1000 chambers and one bullet, would you play Russian roulette with that if your life wasn’t on the line? The risk of cancer for the same radiation dose is much higher for children.
A technically clear answer to this is to use MRIs wherever practical, and to make MRIs more practical as much as we can. Why accept 10 mSv of radiation when you could just do an MRI instead? We should be making MRIs more and more practical. I’m concerned about the potential fear-mongering over times like this one when the facility fails to perform an MRI safely, where the impression people get could be that MRIs are dangerous, when the hazard was really the facility doing a bad job. By contrast, a perfectly performed CT scan will deliver a known radiation dose to the patient every time.