I had an MRI done today (doc thinks I have a pinched nerve in my neck).
While it was functioning, I thought I could feel a warm feeling around my neck. Was I just imagining it, or can the MRI be felt in that way?
More likely it was a side effect of contrast if they used it.
I have had several in the past few years and have never noticed any warmth generated. I have had a feeling of warmth due to contrast (as was mentioned.) Specifically and somewhat bizarrely it once made me feel like I had wet myself. (They warned me in advance that it would feel like that.)
Likewise. Though, the warmth I have felt from the contrast agent was around the injection site, not the site they were studying. If they injected gadolinium salt solution, which they are likely to do if they are interested in new growth such as scar formation around spinal nerves, you could have felt that.
An MRI will generate heat, but I doubt it’s enough to feel. Radio waves pass harmlessly through our bodies every second and an MRI will pulse you with very strong radio waves.
Northern Piper, you may be imagining things, but you’re not the only one. I had a chest MRI last year and, at certain times while the machine was running, I felt part of my back heating up. It couldn’t have been the contrast, since I felt it both before and after the contrast was injected.
I recall hearing that an MRI can generate heat in tattoo pigments, and I know there can be complications if you have medical hardware like plates and screws from a broken bone. I don’t know what else, in addition to the above, and contrast, that might be capable of generating either real heat or a perception of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it could happen.
Some cardiac stents may be problematic with MRI – it appears to be mostly older stents. However, when I was stented just before Easter, I was told to avoid MRIs for 6 months, presumably to give time for tissue to grow over the stent, preventing its movement in the MRI’s magnetic field.
Nope, can’t be from the contrast - I didn’t get any, just in the MRI and away it went. And, it wasn’t just on my neck that I felt it - I also felt it around my lips/nose at the first scan, then they moved me deeper in the tube, and I felt it around my neck.