The Next Step in MRI Safety

Patient safety is a topic that is always at the fore-front of medical professionals’ thoughts. Biomedical technicians’ jobs exist primarily to ensure patient safety. Whether it is maintenance, repair or calibration, fundamentally safety is at the core of the profession.

MRI accidents, due to the extraordinary forces involved, garner particular attention within as well as outside the medical community.

Who can forget the six year old boy who was killed when an oxygen tank was pulled into the MR scanner he was occupying? Other documented incidences include infusion pumps flying into scanners (luckily no patient harm occurred); while another, oxygen tank incident, resulted in minor injuries to hospital staff . Even something as innocent as a hairpin has been lodged into a patient’s nasal cavity.