Doctors wary of MRI security after freak accident in Mumbai

KOLKATA: A single lapse in screening patients before an MRI scan may result in a disaster like the one that killed a patient’s acquaintance who was carrying an oxygen cylinder in a Mumbai hospital last week. Doctors and hospital authorities admit that while vigil at MRI chambers is stringent, it is far from being foolproof. Several hospitals still lack an ante-chamber where patients can change into gowns and a few even let in patients’ acquaintances without a thorough screening.

A radiologist at a private hospital in the city recalled how a ward attendant had wheeled in a patient into an MRI chamber on a trolley. “Fortunately, the patient had been moved from the trolley and we managed to get the trolley out of the MRI chamber in the nick of time. It would have been just as disastrous as the Mumbai incident,” he said. A 3T MRI machine — which is the latest version and is used in most hospitals — has a magnetic field strong enough to suck in anything within a 6m radius from its epicentre. Anybody carrying or wearing a metal object can easily get pulled into the machine.

Vigil in MRI chambers also need to be strengthened, felt some. “Once, when a patient was undergoing an MRI, his relative barged into the chamber carrying a coin purse. We had to push him out before he got hurt,” said a senior medic at a government hospital. But oxygen cylinders are barred in and around MRI chambers in city government hospitals since most of them have their own supply, pointed out

Rezaul Karim

, senior faculty member at

Sagar Dutta Medical College

and Hospital.

It is, however, important to thoroughly counsel the hospital staff assisting the radiologist, felt

Irfaan Akhtar

, microbiologist.


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