Tackling MRI Accident Risk

MRI area should be physically identified in four zones and personal into three levels

- Deepak Agarkhed

The pistol of the security guard escorting VIP got struck on MRI Gantry. Or two struck in MRI for four hours. Death by negligence at the MRI room. These are real-time incidents of accidents inside MRI canning room in hospitals. These incidents raise questions on the public mind about the safety of person undergoing diagnosis or treatment in hospital or any diagnostic centre.

Healthcare technology is advancing every year to improve patient care. The healthcare team accordingly needs to continuously update their skills and adopt the latest practice. The new technologies also comes with new openings for harmful environment. The hospital should evolve strong implementation strategy to reduce hazard (i.e. potential source of harm) as a part of the risk mitigation strategy. The hospital accreditation standards encourage hospital to do regular to hazard identification and risk assessment as a part of proactive measures. The ECRI institute from the USA comes up with yearly report on top technology hazards to public, using a set of criteria like frequency, severity and preventability.

Recently one tertiary care hospital conducted a survey to know the awareness on MRI safety. One of the questions was to know what was the difference between CT scan and MRI operation. Most of them wrongly answered stating that in MRI, the magnet is turned off during non-patient scanning time like CT scan, whereas in X-Ray the tube is switched off. This reflects a lack of knowledge that usually leads to near miss or accidents with respect to MRI. The fact is that MRI magnet is never turned off, it runs 24X7 throughout the year. It is prohibitive to carry magnetic material inside MRI room as with huge magnetic intensity around, the magnetic material flies with speed of bullet and gets attracted to MRI gantry.