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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

As much as I would like to say “What are you doing weight training in an MRI room?”, a bigger pressing question is “How did the staff miss this?”.

MRI is extremely dangerous when it comes to having magnetic metals on you and it’s SOP from the hospital to ensure there is none when the patient goes in. The one time I had to get it done (in a different country) I had to walk through TSA like metal detectors before I get into the MRI room. Is that not common here? Not even hand held wands? We just trust the patient now?

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He wasn't the patient, and the article says he entered without permission when his wife called him in after the scan was done. It sounds like she called him and he went in either before anyone could stop him, or against the protests of hospital staff (no speculation either way).

I wonder why it isn't interlocked so the door is locked while the MRI is on. Maybe fire code? Emergency medical response seems unsafe unless there's a team of people with special non-ferrous gear waiting around. They'd have to shut off the MRI anyways to avoid stethescopes and what not becoming projectiles.

> I wonder why it isn't interlocked so the door is locked while the MRI is on.

It’s always on. It’s always magnetic. The rf comes on when the scanner is imaging.

Well that would certainly explain it. I thought they were some form of electromagnet.

> He wasn’t the patient

Everyone had to go through the detectors including the staff to avoid accidents, which is why I brought my experience up.

I guess the timeline suggests maybe they never expected him to go in, until the wife called out to him.

Maybe he's a big dude and it was just under his shirt/vest or something?

When I look up "weight training necklace" it looks like a weight disk at the end of some rope, so maybe it wasn't particularly apparent from the technicians view.

Obviously, not excusing the tech here at all.

Man, I don't wanna bag a dead guy, but I know fuckall about medicine, and even less about MRI's, the ONLY thing I know about MRI's is that they're composed of giant ass magnets and you do not want to be wearing any metal near them.

I guess there's no guarantee anyone would learn that but fuuuuck. What a way to go.

Not sure how representative I am here, but I had no idea that the magnets were powered up except during the scan.

My layman's understanding was that they always kept the superconductors fully chilled, but I assumed they only ran electricity through them when needed.

Only as I'm writing this does it occur to me that because of the superconduction, the magnets will remain energized for a very long time unless intentionally discharged.

When I had a mri, they didn't use a wand or detector.

I wonder if the chain was gold colored and so the people assumed it was gold and safe.

I had MRI a lot of times (I have MS). Every single time as we are walking to the machines, the nurse / technician / whoever asks me a couple of questions (which I have to fill before going in as well). Then I have to take off my clothes in the changing room. They would have never missed it. And no one can just simply walk into the corridor (there is a door) that has the door to the MRI machine. Even if they do so, they would be noticed immediately.

Taking a large metal item into an RF transmitter is problematic too. Heating can burn people.

Doesn't even need to be metal: they make sure you aren't touching skin-to-skin anywhere while you are in the machine (for example, don't put your hands together) in order to avoid induced current loop burns.

https://riteadvantage.com/understanding-and-reducing-burns-i...

Yes, you’re right. This can happen and is reported.

I’ve done a lot of MRs and haven’t seen this effect.

I don’t stop patients forming loops with arms or legs unless they are quite sweaty or very large and at risk of sweating.

1) ah yes, 5kg if gold in this guy's neck has to be real! 2) a non-magnetic metallic mass that large will still likely screw up the image, if not the machine.

I seems like an easy mistake to make. The imaging was done, per the article "His wife told local media she had called him into the MRI room after her scan" and so the technician could have looked at it being gold colored and didn't apply critical thinking to presume it wasn't real. There was no concern about screwing up the image.

5kg gold makes a surprisingly slender chain, actually. I've heard 1kg gold is as big as an iphone.

>Ms Jones-McAllister said the visit on 16 July was not her and her husband's first time at the MRI facility. It was also not the first time that the employee had seen her husband's weight that he used for training, she said.

>She claimed an employee and her husband previously "had a conversation about it before: 'Oh that's a big chain'".

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