A woman I know said that her hood piercing was torn out by an MRI. Her six year old son was getting a scan and she didn’t mention her jewelry to the techs. I did not examine this, so I am not sure of all the facts.
FWIW,
Rob
I’m rather incredulous. Obviously metal and MRI’s should not mix, but the risk really arises when you have an unrestrained object that has the opportunity to accelerate over a long path before it impacts something else. People manage to sneak hair-barrets or earrings into MRI’s all the time, and usually they don’t dislodge from the hair or ear. I’d be suspicious of the claim that a clit-piercing (presumably the mom was wearing some pants through this ordeal?) would be able to accomplish the feat of ripping right through.
Not all medical implants are a problem. In fact, most are not, because they go to a lot of trouble to design MRI compatible implants. Many implants are also OK because they form a secure bond with the native tissues and can’t be moved by a 1.5-3 T field. Hip implants are a good example of this, you can’t typically haul someone’s femur out of their leg with an MRI. You can probably chat with your MD about this, and they can tell you if your implant would be an MRI issue.
Also, unconscious people rarely get emergent MRIs. Usually a CT will tell you what you want to know in an acute situation.
Thanks, That is relief to hear. I was told I could never have another MRI after my recent surgery. I’m not sure why but will ask my doctor at my next visit. Thanks 
Again, it depends on the implant. The real reassuring thing is that they rarely chuck people in the magnet without talking to them first, and the MRI techs keep close track of what can and can’t go in the magnet. If your doctor said you can’t, then you can’t. If some random person said you can’t, then it is worth checking out.
Keep in mind that I don’t know what kind of implant or surgery you have had*, and that I’m just a random guy on the internet 
. Talk to someone who knows your medical history.
- vascular clips may not be ok, and pacemakers and defibrillators are right out.
Our town recently had a fire in a medical clinic. A fireman up on the roof had the axe ripped out of his hand. It went through the roof. Oopsie. I bet that went into the notes for future responses.
The other problem they had with that fire was the medication. When the water flooded in, it flooded out the doors with a tide of floating medicine bottles, ampules, syringes, etc. They had to block off the street’s storm drains. Nothing but rain down the drain.
Very interesting. From the link:
“An unsuccessful attempt to remove the gun from the magnet resulted in the gun being pulled to the right side of the magnet (Fig. 1). The decision was then made to power down the magnet to remove the gun.”
Would that have been a quench? If not, why couldn’t the machine be powered down all the time, except when a scan was going to be run?
The magnets are superconductors, kept cold with liquid helium. Powering down the magnet usually involves boiling off the supercold liquid. This can be a problem in and of itself, as the huge rush of gas has to be vented, and if its not vented right can blow out pipes or fill the room with non-breathable cold gas. Restarting would then require a hell of a lot of new liquid helium, a lot of ‘level 3 diagnostics’ and a big chunk of down time.
Yes, that’s actually one of the few things that would keep you from getting an MRI.
Medical implants of various types are pretty much all safe, unless they’re old or very new.
X-Rays and CTs are probably what you would get. The MRI is just too complicated and takes a long time. If you’re in a serious accident, you probably don’t have the half hour to lay there getting an MRI.
Yes it was a quench. Only the quench can stop the magnet. Fixing the magnet after the quench is Very Expensive.
What’s really annoying is the wigs black women like to wear. They’re woven with this little metal threads. You tell them there’s metal in the wig but they deny it. So you put them in the MRI, start the scan of the brain, see a ton of artifacts, go back and try to talk them into believing there’s metal in their wig. They then mention hairpins, so you remove those and start the scan again, even though the threads used to attach the wigs are metal and you know it. So after another failed attempt, you tell them they need to remove the wig and they get upset because it costs a lot of money to get the wig put on in the first place. So you send them back to get a hair dresser or relative to remove the wig. Next day, you’re finally scanning them. 
Another annoying thing: Most MRIs are off site of the hospital. The entrance for the hospital requires a key card with a magnetic strip. You forget to remove it when taking a patient in, or out, and it gets wiped.
We once scanned a guy with a spinal cord stimulator. That’s a pretty bad mistake. The guy never told us about it, and nothing was found in the chart. We only found out about it after the doctor called us in the middle of the procedure. Nothing happened to the guy though.
I think I remember something about not keeping your hands crossed while in the machine either. It creates a short circuit or something. Not sure how much of a concern it is though.
It’s a quench, but it’s not an emergency quench. What they had to do to get the gun loose would have taken about a day to gradually reduce power in the magnet without causing a catastrophic release of the coolants. Then, it takes a while to bring it back up to normal power and recalibrate it. From what I know of it, it’s a very time consuming and very expensive process - this scanner was probably offline for most of a week. Needless to say, this isn’t something you want to do with any regularity.
The rest of the system - stuff like the RF amplifiers, and computers - does get turned off with some regularity, depending on how frequently it’s used. At an independent MRI clinic, they probably lock the doors and shut it off at 6PM, but a hospital probably keeps their running 24/7.
First, regarding a quench - it is an uncontrolled release of a large amount of helium, displacing the oxygen in the room, which can be and has been fatal to the occupant by asphyxiation. This is not the same as ramping down (“shutting down”) the machine, whereby the magnetic field power is gradually diminished, allowing the removal of metal in the bore.
Second, as many have said, not all metals are the same. Iron containing metals are affected by the magnetic field; copper wire, for example, is affected by the radiofrequency and can induce a current, which can burn. The metallic ink in tatoos has been described causing a burning sensation. Lead (bullets, most shotgun pellets) is not a problem. Implants screwed into bone are not a problem. Unknown metal content foreign bodies are questionable, but if it has been present for a long time, there is usually enough scarring that no further damage is considered likely. A metal fragment IN THE EYEBALL is an absolute contraindication to MRI, however metal in the tissues surrounding the eye remains questionable. That is why a reputable MRI center with good techs will ask SO many questions, and ask you to get xrays if necessary.
There are some other non-lead alternatives besides steel shot. Steel shot isn’t recommended for many shotguns because it damages the barrels. Other non-lead shots include bismuth, tungsten matrix, and tungsten alloys containing varying degrees of iron. The problem with most of those is that they are expensive. Bismuth has odd magnetic properties - it’s diamagnetic, and repelled by a magnetic field. This is generally a pretty weak effect, although bismuth is the most strongly diamagnetic element, and I’m going to guess that it’s not a problem, but I don’t know.
Had three, never a full body or head but even these I was down to civvies & a hospital like gown.
[singsong]
Ain’t no metal on me, ain’t no metal on me, don’t know about the rest of you mugs …
[/singsong]
I had surgery on my ankle years ago, and the Dr. said he put a bone growth stimulator in there to help it heal. He said it was basically a small battery connected to a conductor.
So years later I get another Dr. asking about me getting an MRI, and we need to know if the thing I have is MRI safe. I call for my records, and ask about the bone growth stimulator. His answer was “No that would be bad. Like ‘bone on fire’ bad.” So no MRIs for me.
Why would piercings be bad? A tongue piercing,nose piercing or a piercing on your lip so on? A piercing is small.
Anyways ask your doctor about it before you get MRI if you have piercings any where.
I’m new to the thread and I have a MRI question…25 years ago I got shot in the chest with a BB gun…a BB is a 4.5mm steel brass coated sphere…very very small. this BB embedded itself in one of my upper left ribs…doctor at the time said no need to remove it as bone would grow over it and “encapsulate it”. now, 25 years later I’m in need of a knee MRI to my right knee. ive called 6 MRI clinics and asked to speak to the techs. ALL of them said it shouldn’t be any problem at all and that it would be my legs in the tube not my chest.
my question is, are there any here who agree that because a bb is so small and light a nd encased in rib bone that ittl be safe for me to get a knee MRI? should I be scared?
Don’t be scared, be honest. Tell the doctor and the tech and they can advise you. They’re really not in the business of causing injury and death and like to avoid it if possible. And anyway, it’ll come out one way or another.
I had an MRI a few months ago and they had a piece of new equipment, a sort of quick scanner simply to look for things like that before you go in.
oh that would be cool…all the techs I called on the phone said since its been in there 25 years and is embedded by rib bone and is so small and light that it wasn’t likely it would come out, one of them said he would let me approach the magnet slowly and if I felt anything weird we just wouldn’t do the test
Honestly if I had a tiny piece of metal in me and I was worried that it would be ripped out my brain would psychosomatically conjure weird feelings from my anxiety.