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Philips recalls 340 MRI machines because they may explode in an emergency
- BobaFloutist 3y agoWell that's definitely not what they're supposed to do.
- jt2190 3y agoThe Food and Drug Administration’s web page about the recall is clearly written: (edit: actually not a recall but a requirement that the machines are not used until they’re serviced) https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/philips-north-america-llc-recalls-panorama-10t-hfo-due-risk-explosion-during-quench-procedure-caused https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/p...
- akira2501 3y agoThat's absolutely a recall. An FDA recall means the product is in violation of the law. Those violations must be corrected or the device must be destroyed, and if not, then the FDA has the right to seize it. The recall strategy in this case is not to ship it back to the manufacturer, but to have the manufacturer come out and service the device until it is again compliant with the law.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIt has very little to do with the violations of the law. There is no law that states mri machines must have <X% chance of exploding. The way these things work is that the firm has decided based on their data and reports to issue a recall and notify the FDA. The manufacturer recommends hospitals not use the device, however there is the possibility that they continue to do so (the probably won't for liability reasons).
- pkaye 3y ago[flagged]
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI do medical risk assessments professionally and this is not at all how it works at all. Most FDA approved medical products have inherent risk, e.g. X% of people will die. The question is actually about how the actual performance aligns with disclosed and approved risks. If Y% of people are hurt, the expectation was X%, and Y>X, then this is grounds for a penitential investigation and potential recall. If it actually worked the way you stated, these machines would probably never have been recalled.
- tedunangst 3y agoIt's copy pasta from fight club.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI get that, but it is also wrong.
- Jabbles 3y agoThere has been one reported event of an explosion in 22 years of use. There have been no reports of injury or death. I wonder what the total negative health consequences of not being able to use all those MRI machines until they are serviced will be.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAlso doesn’t say it happened to a Phillips machine, my read is that’s for any MRI machine - ever. So, yeah, a recall, but nothing ominous about it. Things get recalled all the time.
- sverhagen 3y agoYet the press this is getting is, like the article said, a black mark on Philips. They were a very diverse company, until they chose a few specific markets in which not to divest, healthcare being one of them. This must be quite the chill at headquarters.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcpackieh 3y agoThe fact that nobody was injured in the previous incident is fortunate for anybody who might have been injured then, but doesn't diminish the importance of addressing whatever flaw caused the explosion. Considering that we're talking about a lot of liquid helium being improperly vented, the next time something goes wrong it could end up asphyxiating a hundred people. Just because nobody was in the danger zone the first time it exploded doesn't mean you should count on nobody being in the danger zone the second or third time it might explode. This is the reason work site safety officers yell at people to report all near-miss incidents, not only the accidents that get people hurt. If something went wrong and nobody got hurt by chance coincidence, it might happen again when people are actually near it. Therefore a near miss incident needs to be addressed with the same seriousness as an accident that actually caused injury.
- 3y ago
- pstuart 3y agoIt's a pity that the helium is vented out, considering its increasing rarity. I'm guessing that capture and reuse probably would add way too much to the price of the machine.
- Metacelsus 3y agoIt can be recovered, see for example: https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/12/helium-recovery.html https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/12/helium-recovery.html
- fabian2k 3y agoThis is about quenching, which happens in emergencies or failure. During regular use helium is recycled in similar systems often today. But it's simply not feasible to do that when all the liquid helium in there evaporates at once
- cperciva 3y agoIf you suddenly have thousands of L of He gas on your hands, venting is better than exploding.
- namibj 3y agoThe issue in that respect is that they flood the coils in a helium bath, instead of utilizing additional structures like channels/nozzles to provide the same rate of freshly cooled helium to the heat sources as the bath does, but with far less helium required in the system.
- fabian2k 3y agoI don't think any similar magnet exists that doesn't embed the magnet in a dewar full of liquid helium. And it probably doesn't make any sense to do it differently, even if it were possible. You need some mass here for the helium anyway as you never ever must run dry and it constantly evaporates.
- ars 3y agoThis only happens in an emergency, not during normal operation. Pretty much the only time you would do it when a person is stuck in the machine by some piece of metal that is attracted to the magnet. You hit the quench button which vents all the helium, but more importantly also halts the magnet (all the energy released from halting the magnet goes into boiling the helium), and then you can release the person. You don't do this for any other purpose, for example if some metal cart is stuck in the machine, but no one is at risk, you use a slower method to shut down the magnet (i.e. drain the energy) that doesn't vent the Helium.
- akira2501 3y agoLiquid helium has a 745:1 expansion ratio when converting into a gas. So, that's not a fun problem to have.
- fbdab103 3y agoA helium leak was responsible for taking down the large hadron collider for this same reason. Sudden volume expansion with nowhere to go. CERN retrospective on the event: https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/lhc-leak-repair-short-photostory https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/lhc-leak-repair-sho...
- lnxg33k1 3y agoIts unbelievable the decline of philips, i used to buy their stuff out of trust, but given their story with ventilators, this one, and other personal ones with razors, waterfloss and toothbrushes, I wouldn’t touch anything from them with a ten foot pole
- terom 3y ago> There has been one reported event of an explosion in 22 years of use. There have been no reports of injury or death.
- lnxg33k1 3y agoSo they don't explode when they're new, but after a while? How old was the machine exploding? Not sure how your message disproves mine, this would be the second recall in few years for philips, whatever, doesn't come through as high quality
- krisoft 3y ago> So they don't explode when they're new, but after a while? How old was the machine exploding? No. What they say that the problem occurs only very rarely. The first of this MRI model was introduced in 2001, there are hundreds of them used all the time and only one explosion happened. Presumably that is the explosion which has shown them that there is something wrong with the model, and now they are taking corrective action. > this would be the second recall in few years for philips It is a huge company doing a lot of things. The safest way to never make a mistake is by sitting on your hand and refusing to do anything. Some of the affected MRIs are old enough now to buy you a alcohol, how is this an evidence of anything recent with Philips? > whatever, doesn't come through as high quality They found a rare but potentially high impact issue and are fixing it in decades old equipment on their own dime. Show us that you have done things of similar complexity better. What equipment you have designed is in constant operation since 22 years? How do you know it doesn't have any low probability, high consequence failure modes?
- 3y ago
- hinkley 3y ago“I don’t wanna explode.”
- trebligdivad 3y agoI dont understand what the fault is - quenching is bad but happens. Blocking the quench path sounds bad - is it saying that something is causing it to be blocked or is the machine supposed to do something else if hte quench path is blocked (what can it do??)
- EA-3167 3y agoThe rapid conversion from liquid or solid to gas, and the means to (briefly) contain that... is a bomb. The reason you don't block the emergency relief is that you turn a quench from an emergency involving asphyxiation, to something resembling a detonation.
- trebligdivad 3y agoRight, but that's true of all MRI's - so what's different in this one?
- refulgentis 3y ago"During a quench, which is not common, a large amount of helium evaporates and is vented outside the building through a venting system," the recall explains. "If an unknown blockage is present in the venting system and the pressure exceeds design limits, the structural integrity of the system could be compromised."
- op00to 3y agoThis is a risk of any mri machine that uses helium to cool a magnet. Why are only these machines being recalled when if you block the exhaust of any mri scanner it will blow up?
- jabiko 3y agoThis is just speculation, but maybe there is a secondary rupture disk that vents the helium inside the room when the primary path (the exhaust to the outside) is blocked. And maybe that secondary rupture disk is too strong, so another random part of the helium containment fails, blowing up the machine and possibly injuring the patient. But please note again that this is pure speculation.
- jokoon 3y agoI worked in x ray imaging software in a company that assembled them. Risk assessment and traceability are not fun, but it's interesting to see how to make safe things. I wish general software had similar constraints or designs, or at least insurance companies would lobby the government to force software companies to proof read their code. I don't want rust everywhere, but it should still be possible too approach what rust is doing by other means.
- serial_dev 3y agoToxic teams and lazy developers will also find way to produce crappy software with Rust. The Rust developers of today might produce better software, because they are the early adopters who care about performance, safety and correctness, but I believe (assuming Rust becomes mainstream) if you give regular developers Rust to code in, they will produce the same quality as they do with Java, Javascript, or C. The environment and the individuals are significantly more important than the programming language they use.
- refulgentis 3y agoWhere would i go to learn the fine details of how things like risk assessment and traceability work in practice?
- cperciva 3y agoNote: MRIs are incredibly safe. Your risk of dying due to an MRI machine exploding is significantly less than your risk of dying due to falling while climbing into the machine.
- fabian2k 3y agoYou should respect the magnet though. Those warnings aren't there without reason, getting between an MRI or NMR and a magnetic piece of metal is a bad idea
- cperciva 3y agoOh, absolutely. MRI machines are incredibly dangerous if not handled properly. But the overwhelming majority of MRI-related dangers are well understood and avoidable.
- pengaru 3y agoCase in point: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article283053548.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...
- figmert 3y ago~~I don't know why this is relevant, and quite frankly I find comment odd. Just because y is safer than z, does not mean we should ignore reasons why z isn't safe.~~ See OP's response for why this is crossed out (assuming HN supports it).
- cperciva 3y agoI think it's an important point to reinforce because news stories like this can make patients afraid of MRIs, potentially resulting in them avoiding necessary imaging. Most people on HN are probably not going to make that error -- but I think we have a responsibility to help communicate to the broader community in this regard.
- 3y ago
- dukeofdoom 3y agoAt what point are less safe but cheaper machines worth it. Hospitals ration MRI machine access through out the world. Even in Canada, you have to wait on a list to get access. "Canada could expect to wait a median of 5.4 weeks for a CT scan and 10.6 weeks for an MRI scan"
- lnsru 3y agoIs it not the case, that wait time goes to zero if you pay in cash immediately?
- mattlondon 3y agoFWIW in the UK I was able to get a MRI the next day when going private. They even gave me a CD with the images. They would have even done it the same day but I wasn't available. I suspect in the NHS I wouldn't have even got a MRI at all (it was for a mildish running injury to my knee and just needed some physio in the end, so MRI seemed like overkill!)
- LegitShady 3y agothats because Canada has less than 20% the MRI machines proportionally to population as Japan, and 25% of the MRI machines as the US. We're down near the Czech Republic and Turkey. From 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnet... I didn't look very long so maybe there's more recent numbers available.