8 ms·
Every time I've gotten an MRI the doctors and techs have sworn up and down it's impossible for this stuff to stick around. Getting tired of not being able to b
by gclawes 11mo ago
Every time I've gotten an MRI the doctors and techs have sworn up and down it's impossible for this stuff to stick around. Getting tired of not being able to believe what doctors say...
- bamboozled 11mo agoThe other day I had to get a CT scan, I was kind of annoyed I wasn't offered and MRI, and here we are. I hold a different opinion to you though, I'm glad doctors are always learning more while generally operating with good /extremely good intentions.
- byryan 11mo agoReally wish more people had that mind set. Practicing medicine isn't easy, especially in the US when you have to battle the insane insurance industry.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- margalabargala 11mo ago> I hold a different opinion to you though, I'm glad doctors are always learning more while generally operating with good /extremely good intentions. I agree. Expecting perfection from humans, even experts, is not reasonable and is frankly counterproductive. Willful ignorance is one thing, but people who genuinely attempt to do the right thing at worst just need to be steered slightly differently.
- bdzr 11mo ago> I agree. Expecting perfection from humans, even experts, is not reasonable and is frankly counterproductive. There's a big difference between perfection and "Statistical Literacy Among Doctors Now Lower Than Chance"[1]. I don't think their intentions are bad, but they are woefully incompetent at many basic things. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/17/statistical-literacy-among-doctors-now-lower-than-chance/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/17/statistical-literacy-a...
- bonsai_spool 11mo ago> There's a big difference between perfection and "Statistical Literacy Among Doctors Now Lower Than Chance"[1]. I don't think their intentions are bad, but they are woefully incompetent at many basic things. As it happens, the daily practice of medicine does not require interpretation of p-values. Indeed, medicine existed before the p-value. The people who create studies that ultimately guide policy decisions are specialized (much like people who write GPU drivers are different from those who run inference)
- bdzr 11mo ago> As it happens, the daily practice of medicine does not require interpretation of p-values. Indeed, medicine existed before the p-value. What are you talking about? Doctors refer people based on test results every single day. From what I've seen, hardly any of them understand the precision/recall of the tests that they then use to refer you (or not) to screening procedures (which are not all harmless).
- bonsai_spool 11mo ago> What are you talking about? What are you talking about? How is a single lab value going to generate a p-value? Why are you presuming that your family med doc should be calculating an ROC for each of her 1,500 patients? The selection of lab critical values is performed by experts in clinical pathology. Exactly the people who were not included in the paper you cited. You can find links to support any argument you want on the internet. To place this in clearer HN terms, you're saying that a front end dev is trash because he didn't write his own web browser in assembly.
- stalfie 11mo agoTo be fair, being knowledgeable about the pre-test probability of a patient having a certain disease vs the sensitivity/specificity of a test IS part of the ideal practice of medicine, although how important it is in practice varies somewhat between specialities. In rheumatology for instance, it is front and center to how you make diagnoses. I was in primary care for a short while myself, and on more than one occasion regretted deeply ordering certain rheumatological screening panels (which you get without asking for it when looking for certain antibodies). Explaining to a parent the fact that their child did in fact not have a rare, deadly and incurable multi-system disorder even though an antibody which is 98% specific for it showed up on the antibody assay, that we took for an entirely different reason, is the kind of thing thats hard to explain without understanding it yourself.
- pazimzadeh 11mo agoexpecting humbleness and willingness to be wrong from medical personnel is reasonably though
- torstenvl 11mo agoExcept that a disturbing number of doctors insist that they are always right and you are always wrong. A year ago, one insisted vehemently—to the point of yelling—that I shouldn't be supplementing Vitamin K because my potassium levels were fine.
- aspenmayer 11mo agoI can only presume that they got the atomic symbol for potassium (K) mixed up with vitamin K. That’s so wrong it crosses over into being “not even wrong” but entirely wrong and beside the point. I hope they aren’t your doctor anymore, or anyone’s. Please tell me you reported this incident to the state medical board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong > "What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gf000 11mo agoAs opposed to what group of humans?
- dreamcompiler 11mo agoOMG! This doctor shouldn't be practicing medicine if he thinks Vitamin K is potassium. OTOH Vitamin K can cause blood clots.* I assume you know this and are being appropriately attentive to the issue. * The K comes from Koagulationsvitamin which it was called in Danish when first discovered.
- lsniddy 11mo agovit k does not cause blood clots
- Aurornis 11mo ago> I was kind of annoyed I wasn't offered and MRI, and here we are. This paper isn’t saying that MRI contrast agent is high risk in general. There’s a risk in misinterpreting these niche papers to overstate their relative risk. This is a common mistake when people start reading medical papers and begin overweighting the things they’ve read about as the most significant risks.
- dreamcompiler 11mo agoCT is cheaper than MRI, and it's harder to get insurance to pay for the latter. There are some legitimate diagnostic reasons to prefer CT imagery, but I think cost may be a more common deciding factor.
- raverbashing 11mo agoThe most common factor is that they see different things. There may be some overlap but you want one or the other depending But yes cts are cheaper.
- drum55 11mo agoThat's surprising, it's at least casually known that they're bio accumulative to some extent. I've joked to the techs before about gadolinium eventually accumulating enough to not be necessary if you do it with enough frequency. Realistically though any situation that you're doing the contrast you're probably at a lot more risk of whatever they've found than from the contrast agent.
- smeej 11mo agoI had to have contrast to diagnose a simple cyst, which is entirely asymptomatic and was discovered by accident in the background of a cardiac MRI (family history of SCD, but my own heart is fine). You're making me feel lucky about what was otherwise a very unpleasant experience!
- koolba 11mo agoMaybe donate some plasma afterward. There was a study about firefighters exposed to microplastics that had a statistical reduction after regular donations. Pretty much just diluting it out of your system.
- whatevaa 11mo agoMaterials like these accumulate in other parts of your body, like bones. Letting some blood out is not gonna change it.
- notimetorelax 11mo agoNah, they used it on me when I cracked a toe. If I knew that this may be that dangerous I’d go the way without the contrast agent.
- wobfan 11mo agoBased on what I've read I'm quite sure a cracked toe is way more dangerous than a contrast agent.
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- hammock 11mo ago[flagged]
- javascriptfan69 11mo agoIs this a study in rats? Is there any data beyond 48 hours? The concentrations outside of the injection site are vanishingly small. And I would consider 48 hours to be pretty quick. If it was still around after a week I would be concerned. Not really sure what I'm supposed to take away from this.
- hammock 11mo agoI pulled a bad source, my fault. Thought more people were familiar with this. Here are three published human sources. mRNA vaccination stimulates robust GCs containing vaccine mRNA and spike antigen up to 8 weeks postvaccination in some cases. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9?rss=yes#relatedArticles https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9?rss... The vaccine mRNA was detectable and quantifiable up to 14–15 days postvaccination in 37% of subjects. The decay kinetics of the intact mRNA and ionizable lipid were identical, suggesting the intact lipid nanoparticle recirculates in blood. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c11652 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c11652 A significant number of those who died within 30 days post-vaccination had detectable vaccine in their lymph nodes. All patients with detectable vaccine in their heart also had healing myocardial injury, which started before or at the time of their last vaccine dose. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-023-00742-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-023-00742-7
- deeth_starr_v 11mo agoWho said? You are posting a link that also makes an unverified claim. I personally never heard this claim about mRNA vaccines.
- hammock 11mo agoI posted a terrible source, my fault, moving too quickly. Here are three published human sources. Now you have heard the claim and seen some evidence. mRNA vaccination stimulates robust GCs containing vaccine mRNA and spike antigen up to 8 weeks postvaccination in some cases. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9?rss=yes#relatedArticles https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9?rss... The vaccine mRNA was detectable and quantifiable up to 14–15 days postvaccination in 37% of subjects. The decay kinetics of the intact mRNA and ionizable lipid were identical, suggesting the intact lipid nanoparticle recirculates in blood. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c11652 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c11652 A significant number of those who died within 30 days post-vaccination had detectable vaccine in their lymph nodes. All patients with detectable vaccine in their heart also had healing myocardial injury, which started before or at the time of their last vaccine dose. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-023-00742-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-023-00742-7
- zoeysmithe 11mo agoThe data until recently suggested that, so thats the risk you take. Would you rather be living in ancient greece and shoved full of hemlock leaves for arthritis? Or have a 19th century surgeon remove your appendix? There's risk in life and odds-wise if you're in the developed West, you're going to get care and medicine that will greatly prolong your life. Also this paper is super vague. What percent of people even get this? How long does it last? They havent even done a study to see how long it lasts yet. I have a feeling this isnt going to be our generation's asbestos or thalidomide. That being said, you should decide your own risk profile. If MRI gives you concerns there are alternatives that dont involve contrast.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoNo one is asking to go back to Ancient Greece. But given our track record, a little humility would go along way. When a highly educated doctor tells you that something is safe, a person is going to assume that means that someone somewhere has proven that the substance is safe. If what they really mean is that no one really knows, but so far, no experiments have been able to prove danger, then we should say that instead.
- bawolff 11mo agoBy that definition, nobody knows anything is safe.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoYes, exactly, but that is the definition that people who are not doctors are going to use when doctors tell them that something is safe. So we shouldn’t do that.
- sarchertech 11mo agoBy that definition there is literally no substance in existence that has been proven safe. Because the definition of safe is that no experiments have been able to demonstrate danger. You can’t prove a negative.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- lossolo 11mo agoAround 10 years ago, I had an brain MRI with contrast. I specifically googled it and found a paper saying it builds up in the brain. I asked the MRI specialist about it, she was surprised I knew this and said she was familiar with the research. She mentioned that her professor also knew about it, but that the paper had other motivations, some conflict of interest, and that I shouldn't be worried. FFS.
- throwup238 11mo agoWhy did you have a brain MRI with contrast?
- Broken_Hippo 11mo agoContrast isn't always necessary. Am not a doctor, but I have MS and get them regularly. I've only had a couple with contrast. My understanding is that contrast highlights abnormal stuff and some tissue sorts more than without contrast. Specifically, they use it in MS to get a better look at an active lesion in the brain. You can still see the lesion without the contrast, though, so most of the MRIs are taken without contrast and then another with contrast if necessary. They have known about various side effects of contrast for some years (allergies, etc).
- lostlogin 11mo agoI’m also not a doctor but am an MR tech and the above explanation is good. With MS, active lesions enhance and old, inactive ones don’t. There are a lot uses for contrast in brain imaging and it is very helpful. Gadolinium deposition obviously isn’t great.
- array_key_first 11mo agoLiterally every single medical procedure, down to the most mundane, has risks. That's why we don't give MRI's out the wazoo. We actually gatekeep them a lot, and most research will tell you that investigative MRIs without chief complaints are a bad idea and we don't do them. I had cancer. I had no MRIs, but multiple CT and PET scans. CT scans and PET scans have risk - they don't just do those for kicks. But you know what else has risks? Cancer. So there's a calculus here. Every single medical procedure, down to getting your blood drawn, has this calculus. Nothing is risk free.
- dsnr 11mo ago> That's why we don't give MRI's out the wazoo Why? What are the risks of MRIs without contrast?
- nojs 11mo agoThe reason is cost and availability, not risk.
- array_key_first 11mo agoIncorrect, there is risk associated with performing MRIs without chief complaints. These types of MRIs often cause anxiety and can lead to riskier medical procedures that are not necessary. This is because imaging is actually not perfect. There is always a risk you see something there that is not a big deal, or that you misinterpret the image. That potentially means unnecessary surgery or medicine. That can kill you. That's why if you go to any doctor in the US and say "I want an MRI, no, nothing is currently wrong with me" they won't do it.
- nojs 11mo agoI do not buy this argument. The error would be in misinterpreting the image and taking the unnecessary treatment, not in doing the test in the first place. How is there any benefit in having less information?
- Krasnol 11mo agoWhich country do you live in? Here in Germany you have to sign something if they give you "stuff" informing you of possible risks. Something that always exists.
- johnisgood 11mo agoYup. You can get MRI here for "free", AND you can refuse contrast material, and indeed it requires your signature.