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.
unsupp0rted · 58m ago
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.
sippeangelo · 42m ago
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?!"
Workaccount2 · 11m ago
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.
zimpenfish · 36m ago
> "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.
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.
colechristensen · 36m ago
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.
meindnoch · 13m ago
And yet, Koreans are afraid of fans.
raverbashing · 12m ago
Honestly yeah, why do you need your "workout chain" while taking your wife to a medical exam?
Sounds like Darwin Awards material
OisinMoran · 34m ago
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?
SketchySeaBeast · 16m ago
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.
JackFr · 7m ago
According to other articles I've read, multiple heart attacks.
richrichardsson · 17m ago
Very likely severed spinal column, if not complete decapitation.
avalys · 13h ago
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.
ryandvm · 1h ago
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?
scarier · 27m ago
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.
Cthulhu_ · 18m ago
Or gate it, period - nobody should get in that easily.
SketchySeaBeast · 14m ago
I wonder if that's a problem in case a medical intervention is required.
LeifCarrotson · 12h ago
> "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.
sapiogram · 14m ago
> 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.
daft_pink · 11h ago
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.
josephcsible · 12h ago
> 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.
jpgvm · 12h ago
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.
Doxin · 4h ago
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.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
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.
baq · 34m ago
strangle? dude's neck was probably crushed. if I had to guess this was a near decapitation, not a strangling.
close04 · 32m ago
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.
zdragnar · 42m ago
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.
Filligree · 22m ago
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.
potato3732842 · 49s ago
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.
pxtail · 2h ago
> 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.
nancyminusone · 34m ago
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?
al_borland · 12h ago
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.
xboxnolifes · 12h ago
> 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.
solid_fuel · 8h ago
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.
WillAdams · 12h ago
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:
According to the above post, it's a venting of the liquid helium, which requires ~$25,000 to replace).
9dev · 6h ago
We’re talking about a human life here. Fuck the balance and vent immediately!
shigawire · 32m ago
There is some consideration for other patients who may die due to not getting an MRI in the meantime
egberts1 · 4h ago
Again, it isn't an instant-off button.
Only good for removal of any metal-adorn victims and unintended metallic objects ...
potato3732842 · 36m ago
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.
SketchySeaBeast · 11m ago
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.
No comments yet
Filligree · 20m ago
He was wearing a twenty pound necklace. In a magnetic field that strong? His throat was crushed, likely instantly.
zimpenfish · 32m ago
Do you have a source for that? The BBC just says "a medical episode" of which he died later.
JackFr · 5m ago
Multiple heart attacks.
seydor · 12m ago
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
tjpnz · 2m ago
More likely to end up with a burn mark in the shape of the necklace.
poulpy123 · 43m ago
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...)
Loughla · 1m ago
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.
alnwlsn · 9m ago
I got to take apart an MRI-safe(ish) 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.
lurkshark · 35m ago
> 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.
rbanffy · 2m ago
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).
leptons · 26m ago
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?
scarier · 16m ago
Nope, metal detectors are fairly typical for MRI access. They just generally aren’t set up as an engineering control like you suggest.
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.
voidUpdate · 59m ago
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
JackFr · 40s ago
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.)
m_j_g · 47m ago
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).
voidUpdate · 16m ago
Sadly that's a little too far for me to pop over for a day
poulpy123 · 36m ago
Nice to be on a country where these facilities are not overwhelmed
harvey9 · 48m ago
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.
voidUpdate · 18m ago
I would prefer to have a trained professional operating my MRI scanner as opposed to someone who read the manual for 10 mins
jpgvm · 12h ago
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.
its-summertime · 5h ago
That size of building is relatively normal for a non-hospital MRI facility.
nancyminusone · 26m ago
I wonder if you could take a walk around that building and see a compass needle move.
poulpy123 · 35m ago
I have only been to MRI in hospitals but it looks shady as fuck
ahartmetz · 4h ago
"Open MRI" - how appropriate. Too open MRI even.
JdeBP · 5h ago
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.
"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.
isolli · 21m ago
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.
Workaccount2 · 9s ago
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 easy 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.
tyleo · 47m ago
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.
yard2010 · 36m ago
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.
phkahler · 1m ago
>> 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.
SketchySeaBeast · 34m ago
While wearing "a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training."
foobarian · 27m ago
It's literally like reading a guide "How to kill yourself with an MRI machine" and following it step by step
SketchySeaBeast · 9m ago
Step 1: Affix excessively large metallic decapitation device.
Step 2: Lock metallic decapitation device in place.
jleyank · 13h ago
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…
kylecazar · 13h ago
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."
atmavatar · 7h ago
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.
arp242 · 6h ago
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.
jvanderbot · 16m ago
You say "hospital" but this was basically an amateur run MRI salon as far as I can tell.
mhdhn · 5h ago
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.
poulpy123 · 42m ago
Most people included myself don't realize the risks of a MRI
zigzag312 · 5h ago
> she was getting an MRI on her knee and asked her husband to come in to help her get up afterwards
russfink · 10h ago
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.
itslennysfault · 25m ago
That's crazy... Did they bill you for the cost of shutting down the MRI and refilling the helium?
Filligree · 14m ago
They probably left it until the next maintenance cycle. Nobody wants the downtime.
zigzag312 · 5h ago
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.
voidUpdate · 7m ago
I think it's inverse-square, and as you get closer, the acceleration increases quadratically, so your speed increases faster (possibly cubic?)
KineticLensman · 30m ago
> 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.
elchief · 33m ago
the Final Destination Bloodlines guerrilla marketing is getting out of hand
duxup · 12h ago
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.
blitzar · 4h ago
Caution! This coffee is hot. Avoid pouring on crotch area.
whycome · 45m ago
Do yourself a favour and actually read about that incident.
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.
bobajeff · 12h ago
Good to know the Final Destination series was not exaggerating on the hazards of MRIs.
OutOfHere · 12h ago
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.
mrlonglong · 4h ago
First class candidate for the Darwin Awards.
UomoNeroNero · 28m ago
It's awful to say, but sometimes it's interesting to see natural selection at work.
jmclnx · 12h ago
>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.
Granted that probably does not matter, but to me, for profit generally means cut costs, even safety costs to maximize profits.
Mistletoe · 13h ago
> She said he was wearing a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training.
Um, ok.
odyssey7 · 13h ago
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.
andy99 · 12h ago
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".
redwall_hp · 7m ago
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.
potato3732842 · 54m ago
> 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.
c22 · 36m ago
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.
potato3732842 · 33m ago
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.
Filligree · 8m ago
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.
c22 · 28m ago
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.
odyssey7 · 12h ago
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.
jpgvm · 12h ago
> 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.
andy99 · 12h ago
> 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.
ta20240528 · 5h ago
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.
odyssey7 · 5h ago
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.
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.
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.
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?!"
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.
I had that constant thought for the 15 minutes of my knee MRI (except s/leg bone/body/). Most discombobulating.
30,000 gauss sounds a lot scarier.
Sounds like Darwin Awards material
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.
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.
In this case, they were going to have to do that anyway. Might as well shut it down right away.
I thought these days, most MRIs did have an emergency quench button.
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.
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.
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.
The damage was likely done almost immediately; a heavy 20 pound "necklace" is going to apply a lot of crushing force.
My rule of thumb calculation came to 3,000 lbf, which seems like a lot, but perhaps that’s actually accurate.
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 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.
0 - https://www.zzmedical.com/exclusives/mri-warning-wall-sign-m...
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.
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).
Only good for removal of any metal-adorn victims and unintended metallic objects ...
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.
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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...)
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.
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.
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 guess maybe the MRI machine might interfere with metal detecting?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6ssyJfjVn1fUGaG2A
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.
I don't understand how such a dangerous machine can end up in a place that looks like that.
* 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.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNYW#News_operation Fox 5 NY seems that it used to notably be a trailblazer
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfmaude/d...
People think they can do anything they want nowadays.
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.
Freak accidents will always happen, and if mitigation is easy 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.
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.
Step 2: Lock metallic decapitation device in place.
Also, twenty pound necklace?
"She said he was wearing a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training."
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Um, ok.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They shouldn't have been, it's a major failure of access control.
Astonishing.
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.