4 ms·
Is the capital cost of the machine the expensive part of an MRI? The cost of many medical procedures is more about the staff than the equipment.
by MattGaiser 3y ago
Is the capital cost of the machine the expensive part of an MRI? The cost of many medical procedures is more about the staff than the equipment.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoMRIs use helium, which ain't cheap, although truthfully I don't know if the helium runs dry fast or if you can use the same helium supply indefinitely.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 3y agoThe helium is one of the lowest cost parts of an MRI machine. There is a big heavy spinning magnet that spins around your whole body at like 50 rpm. It's not an easy thing to make.
- modeless 3y agoMRI machines don't spin. You are thinking of CT scanners.
- ta988 3y agoYou are not talking about an MRI, nor a CT. Magnet is fixed in an MRI and you just pulse fields in the XYZ directions to create gradients of magnetic field. The pulse emission and receiving antennas are fixed too. In a CT scan, what is rotating is one or many xray sources and one or many detectors plus some electronics and cooling systems if needed. PET scans have fixed rings of pairs of detectors. But they can also be combined with a CT in the same instrument.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThanks, my bad. Revising my point to be that phasing those fields and controlling the power, is expensive and complicated
- ta988 3y agoAll of that is included in the initial price of the machine. There is no real cost associated when running the machine itself (outside of when a preamp or pulse generator burns but that's rare).
- ta988 3y agoThe helium is used whether you use the machine or not, it is just keeping the superconducting magnet cool (and you can't really put it out of field without an incredible cost and risk of never being able to put it in field again). Plus most recent machines have decent recycling systems (that do not reduce to 0 but over 90% reduction in many cases)
- iancmceachern 3y agoTrue, but this isn't a medical procedure. There are no surgeons etc involved. It amounts to the time for one mri tech to put the person in the machine, push the button. There is some expense in the reading and interpretation of the scans, but it's nowhere near the labor and other costs of surgury or endoscopy.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> this isn't a medical procedure MRI techs and radiologists aren’t cheap.
- thelittleone 3y agoPerhaps AI can optimize MRI operating costs. But the question then is whether those savings would be passed on to the patient or accrued by the manufacturer and hospital as extra margin.
- iancmceachern 3y agoWe all know how that's going to play out
- fallingknife 3y agoOnly needed 1 tech for my MRI which lasted well under an hour. They may be expensive, but they don't get $100 an hour, so hard to believe that is a cost driver for a scan that costs over $1000.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoThe radiologist is a specialized medical doctor. They are not cheap. My neighbor is one, and she makes a considerable amount of money. They’re not technicians, and good ones command more than most surgeons.
- iancmceachern 3y ago