MRI and Anesthesia

Safety precautions in MRI environments

Sami Miettinen
MRI product manager
Datex-Ohmeda

Email sami.miettinen@datex-ohmeda.com

Email: mpboidin@wanadoo.nl

The whole article available in PDF: 51 KB

Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide important diagnostic information, medical practitioners and patients should be aware that there are several unfamiliar, invisible, and non-intuitive hazards associated with MRI. This article concentrates on reminding you about those hazards, as well as explaining general limitations that the MRI environment causes to patient monitoring.

In searching the web, one can find a report of an unfortunate incident that occurred in a magnetic resonance (MR) scan room in a hospital near New York City. A six year old boy undergoing an MRI scan was accidentally killed by an oxygen tank, when the MR device’s magnetic force pulled the ferromagnetic oxygen tank into the MR scanner. In addition to this kind of "missile" accident, a search of ECRI’s* Health Device Alerts (HAD) database** and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Medical Device Reporting (MDR) database revealed several other MRI related incidents:

• "An electric conductive lead was looped and placed against bare skin, causing a burn on the patient’s arm",
• "A patient received blistered burns on the finger where a pulse oximeter was attached during MR scanning",
• "Surgery was performed on a patient based on the artifact present on an MR image. A skin graft was required to treat the affected area"

*ECRI is an independent, non-profit health service research agency dedicated to improving the safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare.
** The HAD database contains abstracts of health technology hazards published in the medical literature from 1978 to the present

Last updated: 1 August 2002Created
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