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Long Island man wearing 9kg-metal necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The man, 61, had entered the MRI room while a scan was underway

How was that allowed?

he asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table.

...while the machine was still working? And isn't that the job of the technician anyway?

the technician helped her try to pull her husband off the machine but it was impossible.

Those machines have a kill-switch for a reason.

I call this BS or a very incompetent technician.
Plus a Darwin award for the guy.

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Couple things:

    The magnet is ALWAYS on.

    The "kill switch" takes about five minutes to actually deactivate the magnet and it costs about thirty grand in helium every time you push it.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Isn't it an electomagnet?

    it costs about thirty grand in helium every time you push it.

    Oh, right, i forgot human lives have a price in the US.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Depends on the machine type. Closed bore machines (the vast majority) use supercunducting electromagnets that are surrounded by liquid helium that creates a very strong magnetic field. To demagnetize them requires dumping the helium.

    Some open bore machines use electromagnets, but they're much less common and not as powerful.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    So the helium itself becomes magnetized, is that it?

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    the helium is liquid, which it only is when it is very very cold.
    The superconductor will keep it's magnetic field forever, as long as it's superconducting, and it will stay superconducting while it is very very cold.

    There is physically no way (as in, it is simply impossible, due to how our world works, not money, not people, not technology) to instantly "switch off" the magnet.

    it needs to go above a certain temperature, to lose it's superconducting nature, and it needs to do it at a pace that doesn't dump a GINORMOUS amount of energy in this magnetic field instantly, because that would be even worse.

    the fault here is in allowing anyone with any magnetic metal anywhere near an MRI. And whoever let that happen is going to have a very bad week.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The US is an outlier in how it charges prices for healthcare services.

    But every country in the world has prices charged for cold liquid helium. It's very expensive to gather, process, store, and ship, regardless of what kind of health care economics apply in your country.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not just the helium, there's a considerable time spent "recharging" the magnet with electricity - many patients will lose access to MRI scan service during the multiple days it is down for recharge.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Dont they loose the access to the machine anyway for few day? Im under impression metal slamming to the machine usually breaks it pretty good.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well, the thing is, to kill the magnetic field within a few seconds would break the machine, so they don't do that because it would up the cost of a shutdown from tens of thousands of dollars to several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the downtime would go from several days to potentially several months.

    As it is they "quench" the superconducting electromagnet, which then requires a large amount of LH2 and electricity to get going again. I have heard numbers like $30,000 to get the magnet running again, not counting lost revenue during the many days it takes to get going.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well the thing is still that the weighted necklace pulled by 1.5 to 3 tesla towards the machine will also put it the machine out if comission from several days to several months.

    Also the down time of the machine depend from so many things like availbility of components, logistics and the actual damage happened, that even the most pragmatic operator could never calculate the price of the repair versus the value of the possibility of saving human life.

    FFS the saved 30k only buys pretty decent slightly used car. Its sick to even start to weight that kind of money to human life.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The machines are actually built pretty tough for the impact. I think they're designed to resist a flying steel oxygen cylinder and just crack some plastic cover parts. One place I visited told a tale of attempting to remove the stuck O2 cylinder using a come-along and strap, but I believe they were unsuccessful and had to quench anyway to get it off.

    could never calculate the price of the repair versus the value of the possibility of saving human life.

    If necklace guy was being choked by his chain and quenching the magnet would have saved his life, I'm 99.99% certain that any tech I have ever spoken with would have quenched the magnet without hesitation. However, if the chain snapped his neck while dragging him across the room like being jerked in a hangman's jig, quenching is far too late to be of help - I'm pretty sure they would push the $30K button anyway, just out of respect for the dead and to make removing him slightly more dignified, also because they're not likely to get that steel ball off without quenching.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's not an electromagnet, it's a superconducting magnet. And turning it immediately off makes it melt.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's both! MRI magnets are electromagnets that are cooled down to 4 Kelvin using liquid helium. Once they reach those low temperatures, they become superconducting. This way, the magnet isn't gobbling up tons of electricity to stay at the desired field strength. Instead, the liquid helium needs to be replenished occasionally to keep it at superconducting temperature. Source: I work with MRI scanners.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    The kill switch is VERY expensive to press, many thousands of dollars, and even when it does an "instant" magnet quench, by the time you hear the screams it's all over anyway, the metal has landed on the magnet. Quenching the magnet will make it let go, but it won't unbreak the neck bones.

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