He was just a kid, a kid according to his neighbors that always had a friendly smile
on his face.
It seemed for a while that fate had dealt him a bad hand: a tumor on the brain, not
something to be taken lightly.
But as things turned out, that tumor was benign.
It was removed by first-class surgeons in New York and that was that, the boy was back
on track and good to go.
But as medical protocol demands, he had to return to the hospital for a scan, just a
routine imaging procedure to check if all was well inside his skull He laid down on
the MRI machine platform and with the push of a button was delivered into the tube.
In the flash of an eye a super-powerful magnetic field sent a metal oxygen tank flying across
the room.
The patient’s skull was crushed.
It was a bad way to die.
You’re now probably wondering how that happened.
We wouldn’t blame you for thinking that the scene we just described is a work of fiction,
but we regret to tell you that it isn’t.
It happened just like that.
The boy, aged six, died soon after from his injuries.
He was a healthy kid and since his tumor was benign, he didn’t have much to worry about.
How could he or his parents have known that freak accidents can happen in an MRI room.
We’ll get around to telling you why they happen, but first let’s have a look at some
more accidents, at times tragic, and in some cases, downright insane.
Imagine this scene.
An off-duty walks into a hospital.
He’s there for an MRI scan, aka, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan.
He might be off duty, but he’s still carrying a weapon, a loaded weapon, too.
One of the staff at the hospital tells him it’s ok to remain strapped for the scan.
Well, that was a mistake, not just a rookie mistake, but a downright foolish blunder.
No sooner than the cop enters the room his gun flies out of its holster as if in the
grips of a malevolent spirit.
It zips across the room, sticks to the side of the machine, and before anyone has the
time to say, “What the hell”, the gun fires.
The cop ducks, the staff dive for cover.
It’s total chaos.
When calm is restored staff try to pry the gun from the machine, but it won’t give
it up.
It takes three hours to pull it off and is only possible when the machine powers down
and releases its grip.
Now for something a little more gruesome.
Rajesh Maru, 32, used to live in Mumbai, India, until an MRI machine had its way with him.
Maru was just a ward boy, the type of person that carries out errands in a hospital.
One day he’s told to take an oxygen cylinder into an MRI room, and that doesn’t go down
too well for him.
No sooner than he enters the room he is sent hurtling through the air.
On contact with the side of the machine the cylinder leaks and poor Maru inhales a steady
draft of liquid oxygen.
Goodbye Mr. Maru, that certainly was a worst way to die.
A few years earlier over in New Delhi, something equally as absurd happened.
A hospital technician and a ward boy were carrying a metal oxygen tank into an MRI room,
and as you can probably guess, that was a big mistake.
The machine did its magic and sent the four-foot tank flying across the room, but as both men
were standing in front of the tank, they were pinned between it and the machine.
The pressure wasn’t like being cramped on a 3rd Class Indian train carriage.
The guys were literally being squashed for four hours until the machine was powered down.
Both men fell unconscious under the extreme pressure.
The injuries sustained included a damaged abdomen, a punctured bladder, muscular damage,
a fractured elbow, and severe bleeding.
We’ll come back to accidents, and possibly the most horrific thing you’ve ever heard
in your life, but first let’s look at the science of why MRIs have done some very nasty
things to people.
Since it’s called a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine you’ve probably guessed by now that
inside the machine there is a magnet, a very powerful magnet.
Magnet strength is measured in Tesla, and the most powerful magnet that has ever been
invented had a continuous field of 45.5 Tesla.
That’s a lot.
Have you ever seen one of the giant magnets used in junkyards to lift cars?
They’re about one Tesla.
Those magnets you have on your fridge, they’re usually around 0.005 Tesla.
The magnet inside an MRI machine is usually between 1.5 and 3 Tesla, although the INUMAC
magnet inside the $250 million super MRI machine has a power of over 12 Tesla, as one person
put, enough power to lift a tank like Magneto.
While most MRI machines will be three Tesla or less, that’s enough to pull guns out
of holsters and send canister-carrying hospital staff flying through the air.
We don’t want to scare you guys from ever getting an MRI scan.
Accidents are rare, and when you consider that from 1982 there have been millions and
millions of scans inside the U.S. alone, your chances of becoming canned meat inside a machine…well…you
have more chance of choking on a jackpot-winning lottery ticket.
MRIs are great.
They give specialists detailed images of your brain and other organs.
The thing is, though, you can’t take any risks with them.
Those veritable X-Men have incredible powers.
They can kill, maim, squash heads, and as you’ll see, torture.
The magnets are usually on all of the time, so it’s not as if people walk into MRI rooms
thinking the machine might be sleeping.
They should know that it never sleeps and will only do so if a big red shut off button
is pushed.
This only ever happens in an emergency, such as when two lean Indian dudes are having their
internal organs violently massaged.
Even when the magnetic field is turned off, it takes some time to die down.
Such an “emergency quench” hardly ever happens because it can damage the magnet and
cost a chunk of cash.
MRI room protocol demands that no magnetic objects are taken into the room lest they
become murderous projectiles, although as you’ve seen, things don’t always go to
plan.
That’s either because staff are uninformed or they thought they were carrying non-magnetic
material.
What you’re all thinking now is what about the fillings in teeth.
If you go for a scan is there a possibility of them coming out, maybe even taking an implant,
and at worst, that implant burrowing through your mouth and into your brain?
That’s a disturbing image, but this has never happened and never will.
If crowns contain magnetic material there’s a chance they could come out or at least be
dislodged, but we just can’t find any data on when this has happened.
Ok, so you can stop worrying about your mouth and death by dental implant, but there’s
more to worry about, and we think you need to know about it.
This is just awful, about as macabre as accidental death gets.
There was a woman, a woman who had something called an “aneurysm clip” embedded in
her brain.
This is a metal clip that holds the base of the aneurysm to prevent blood getting into
it.
It’s a lifesaver, but in 1992 for a 74-year-old woman it was a killer.
The magnet pulled the clip, and that shift through her brain caused a hemorrhage.
So, you have to be aware of what you have inside your body.
Let’s say you have a pacemaker, well, that thing could malfunction under the magnetic
assault.
You certainly don’t want a machine that keeps you alive getting stressed.When this
has happened, people have died.
It happened to a former English mayor in 2004.
She didn’t tell the staff she had a pacemaker and when the MRI scan was switched on her
device scrambled.
The hospital should have known better.
Then there was the guy that had metal lodged in his eye and he’d not told the hospital
staff about it.
The metal moved, and he came out of the MRI blind in that eye.
There was the woman whose hairpin went right up her nose and lodged inside her pharynx,
and there was the man who almost had the worst death, ever.
He had what is called a brain shunt, something to help remove excess fluid on his brain.
He’d turned down an MRI on one occasion because he was claustrophobic.
He was a few minutes away from going into that tube but he backed out, and more importantly,
he hadn’t even told them about his brain shunt.
A few months later and he was back in the hospital, having come to terms with entering
that tunnel.
On this occasion he did tell them about his shunt, only for a technician to say no MRI
for you.
He asked why, and the reply was, the magnet would heat up your shunt and possibly explode
your head.
This was a bit of an exaggeration, but the accidental pressure change from the strong
magnetic field could have been lethal.
It wouldn’t have been a nice way to go.
Now you need to watch this, “Crazy Things A Doctor Removed From Inside A Person's Body.”
or, have a look at this...