4 ms·
> Once the patient was anesthetized and the heavy door to the MRI machine room was closed and locked, I could only monitor my unconscious patient through a dark
by lostlogin 1y ago
> Once the patient was anesthetized and the heavy door to the MRI machine room was closed and locked, I could only monitor my unconscious patient through a darkened heavy glass window.
Why was the door locked?
- azalemeth 1y agoWe have ear defenders and staff inside and monitoring visible in both locations -- anaesthetic machine in the control room. There's not much you can safely do in the fringe field but you can do CPR and rapidly get someone out of the room (and before my spinal injury I used to practice both of those regularly, particularly when part of a team scanning patients with inotropes)
- fragmede 1y agoSo no one can accidentally walk into the room while wearing metal while it is on, to prevent injuries like the post we're commenting on, from happening.
- lostlogin 1y agoThe door shouldn’t be locked when staff are present. It certainly shouldn’t with people inside. I work in MRI.
- fluidcruft 1y agoNo, that's wrong. The locks are because the magnet is always on but the scanner is not always staffed. The scanner door is never locked when the scanner is staffed or a patient is inside.
- fragmede 1y agointeresting!
- fluidcruft 1y agoThere's some sort of latching mechanism to seal the faraday cage. Sometimes it's a latch, sometimes it's pneumatic or a bladder that inflates. The doors can also lock (I'm pretty sure they are required to be locked when qualified personnel are not present) but usually they are not locked when the scanner is staffed and in use.
- lostlogin 1y agoSort of? It should be lockable when no staff are present and no one is in there. It just needs to close when in use.
- BuildTheRobots 1y agoFaraday cage makes sense considering the RF sensitivities involved with MRI. I do wonder if someone being in the room is enough to distort a scan? As there's no ionising radiation danger, it always seemed odd that you were left alone in there.
- fluidcruft 1y agoNo, people in the room won't interfere unless they are doing things inside the scanner during the scan. MRI generally operate at radiowave frequencies (the faraday cages mostly keep radio stations out). There's other stuff they're blocking but radio stations are the strongest interference.
- BuildTheRobots 1y agoIn that case, why (in the above example) does the anaesthetist have to monitor from, or a nurse or family member have to wait outside? I understand there's magnet safety worries, but if the anaesthetist is knocking someone out on the scanner bed, doesn't that prove them magnet safe?
- fluidcruft 1y agoI don't understand your question. The anesthesiologist was describing equipment that was not safe to have in the room and was positioned outside the room to be viewed through the observation window. Many sites screen individuals to accompany patients. It's fairly common in pediatrics. If by "the above case" you are talking about the accident that happened, it has nothing whatsoever to do with anesthesia in the first place. It was an outpatient knee MRI performed without anesthesia at a free standing clinic (not a hospital). Based on the wife's description of what happened, the technologist brought her husband into the room at her request to help her up after the scan had finished and the technologist failed to screen him.