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radioactiveradley · 3 months ago

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#fun fact: we can accidentally cook you in the mri machine#it is very much A Thing

why does this sound like a thing that could just happen at any time. like it isn't _that_ uncommon.

...tell me more?

:cackles and rubs hands: welcome to the wonderful world of what can go wrong during an mri scan.

You have the obvious - someone walks in with an oxygen tank, which promptly flies into the machine, explodes, and kills everyone, then the resultant fire causes the MRI machine to dump helium into the room with the patient and potentially kills everyone all over again, while also destroying your million-pound Big Chungus. I am only being mildly hyperbolic.

But radiofrequency burns are far more common.

They occur because we zap you with a bunch of radiofrequency pulses, which wobble your atoms in a certain way, causing variations within the magnetic alignment of these atoms, thus helping us to gain insight into the density of different tissues within your body by measuring how quickly these atoms relax back to their 'normal' alignment. You can read more on that here!

But as for burns, the important thing is that these pulses cause 'excitation' - they give energy to your atoms! And this is specifically thermal energy.

Your body temp will often go up by about a degree in an MRI machine - which isn't especially dangerous. But in certain circumstances (such as: if you're in direct contact with the radiofrequency-generating coil or the bore of the machine, or with any conductive metal (nose studs, etc), or even, in certain cases, if your skin is in direct contact with itself and thus increasing the heating effect in that particular spot) it can absolutely cause the cooking of soft tissue.

We combat this in numerous ways.

The first and most obvious is: we strip you down to make sure you're not wearing any graphic tees with tiny bits of metal in the design, or leggings with the same (you would be surprised how much clothing contains enough conductive material to result in an RF burn!). We take out all your piercings and so forth. We pop you in one of our special gowns.

Other than that, we position you on the bed so that you won't touch the sides of the machine as you enter. This is, unfortunately, why some larger patients cannot safely use the MRI machine - as well as concerns about the upper capacity of bed weight.

We then put a well-padded coil over you, and - if you're going to be in the machine for a long time - ensure you're lying stretched out without like, arms folded over your chest or whatnot.

All of these things greatly reduce your chance of suffering an RF burn! However, they do still happen - and most of the time, unfortunately, patients do not notice until after the scan is complete, at which point we can only treat the injury rather than preventing it. Still, be aware of your body during an MRI scan, and use your buzzer/etc. to contact the controllers if you start to feel significant heat build up!

...Let's just not talk about how we can pop your organs with Ultrasound. No need to go into that. Nope. Nosiree.

#long blergh of words because I am too lazy to hunt pics xxxx #but heeheeeehehe #it's true #we do cook people but usually only a little!!!!

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