Projectile Injuries

Have you ever had a significant ferromagnetic projectile event or injury at your MR site?  
Projectile or "missile" events (where extraneous ferromagnetic objects are propelled into the scanner) are among the most dramatic dangers of strong magnetic fields. Fortunately, these events are rare. In a 10-year review of 1548 adverse MRI-related events reported to the US Food and Drug Administration, 133 (9%) involved projectiles. Nearly all of these were large objects including walkers, wheelchairs, stretchers, gas cylinders, carts, IV poles, and patient monitoring equipment mistakenly brought into the magnet room. My friend Moriel NessAiver has assembled an amusing collection of cases at his website, simplyphysics.com. The first 3 examples below are reproduced with his permission.
These images and video, although humorous, remind us that real projectile accidents can and do occur, and we must remain forever vigilant. This is brought home by the three news items below, in which death in MR scanners occurred due to propulsion of ferromagnetic oxygen cylinders. The first unfortunate case occurred in New York in 2001, when the head of a 6-year-old boy was crushed by an oxygen tank that flew into the scanner while he was being scanned. The second death occurred in Mumbai in 2018, when a 32-year man brought his family member's oxygen tank into the magnet room. He was pulled into the scanner and pinned there by the cylinder which ruptured on impact. Death was due to inhalation of liquid oxygen and subsequent tension pneumothorax. The third MRI-related death, also by an oxygen tank, occurred in Gimhae, Korea in October, 2021.
Projectile death MRI Colombini
MR projectile death of 6-year old boy in New York, 2001
In early 2023 a fourth MRI projectile fatality occurred in São Paulo, Brazil, where a 40-year-old lawyer died after his being shot by his own gun while accompanying his mother for an MRI.  The man, a well known gun rights advocate and TikTok influencer, brought the hidden weapon into the MRI room even after having been instructed in MRI safety procedures for removal of all metal objects and signing a release. As he neared the MRI scanner the weapon was pulled from his waistband, struck the machine, and fired a bullet into his stomach. After a several week hospital stay he succumbed to his injuries.
Fortunately (but more so due to a conscientious and excellent staff) we never had any type of significant projectile accident in the 30 years I ran the MRI center at Wake Forest scanning hundreds of thousands of patients. Occasionally we would discover a bobby pin or paper clip of unknown origin stuck against the scanner bore in at servicing, but nothing more significant. Our only serious projectile incident did not involve patients or medical personnel, but occurred after hours when a maintenance engineer was working on the scanner. He carried a piece of (unrecognized) ferromagnetic flashing into the scanner room and was injured when the sharp edge of the metal cut into him as it was pulled into the magnet. The engineer suffered an upper abdominal wall and superficial liver laceration from the projectile event, but recovered fully.

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References
     Boy, 6, killed in freak MRI accident. ABC News, 31 July 2001. Downloaded from this link 6 Oct 2020.
     Delfino JG, Krainak DM, Flesher SA. MRI-related FDA adverse events reports: a 10-yr review. Med Phys 2019; 46:5562-5571.  [DOI LInk] (summary of 1548 injuries from 2008-2017)
     Explained: How an MRI machine killed a man in Mumbai. The Indian Express, 19 Sept 2019. Downloaded from this link 6 Oct 2020.
   
Related Questions
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