Never Take A Gun To A MRI Appointment
BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 10 months ago
A veteran was wounded Wednesday at Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center when a handgun he brought into the Indianapolis hospital accidentally discharged in his pocket while he was in a procedure room — possibly an MRI suite.
Hospital officials confirmed the accidental shooting in a statement issued Thursday and reported the victim, whose name was not released, received immediate medical attention. The statement added the man’s wound did not threaten his life.
A hospital spokesman initially confirmed in a telephone call from The Indianapolis Star that the incident involved an MRI, but the subsequent statement said only that the incident occurred “in a procedure room.” When asked for clarification about the involvement of the MRI, the spokesman said in an email that the statement “is our response at this time.”
The statement noted it is a violation of federal and state law to bring a firearm into the hospital and “notification of this law is posted at every entrance.”
Having a gun or other metal object in the vicinity of an MRI machine would also be a violation of widely accepted medical and safety protocol, according to American Journal of Roentgenology, and could have fatal consequences. It was unclear Thursday if criminal charges would be pursued. The Marion County prosecutor’s office was closed Thursday.
The accident at Roudebush may be the first time in the U.S. that a patient was wounded when a gun discharged in an MRI unit.
It also is at least the second instance of a handgun accidentally firing in the suite of one powerful imagining machines which, according to WebMD, use “a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body.”
In the other case, according to a 2002 report in the American Journal of Roentgenology, a gun discharged in an MRI after it was pulled from the hand of an off-duty police officer as he attempted to place the weapon on a cabinet about 3 feet away from the MRI’s magnet bore. No one was injured in that case.
In 2009, another off-duty police officer in Florida sustained a minor hand injury when her department-issued gun was pulled inside an MRI machine. Jacksonville TV station WJTX reported the injury occurred when her hand became trapped between the gun and magnet.
Another MRI accident — which involved a metal object, but not a gun — claimed the life of a 6-year-old New York boy in 2001.
The deadly accident at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., occurred when a metal oxygen tank about the size of a fire extinguisher was pulled into the MRI and fractured the boy’s skull, according to the New York Times.
In a report on the 2002 incident in New York involving a handgun, the Journal of Roentgenology found, the police officer’s “gun was immediately pulled into the bore, where it struck the left side and spontaneously discharged a round into the wall of the room at the rear of the magnet.”
At the time the .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol fired, the report said, “it was reportedly in a cocked and locked position; that is, the hammer was cocked and the thumb safety was engaged to prevent the hammer from striking the firing pin.” There also was a live round in the chamber.
“Many people who choose this weapon for personal protection will carry it in this manner because it allows them to quickly fire the weapon if needed,” the report noted.
The discharge was likely “a result of the effect of the magnetic field on the firing pin block,” the report said.
“The firing pin block was probably drawn into its uppermost position by force of the magnetic field. The firing pin block has to overcome only light pressure from a relatively small spring to release the firing pin. The pistol was likely drawn into the magnetic field so that the muzzle struck the magnet’s bore first. With the firing pin allowed to move freely in its channel, the force of the impact on the muzzle end was sufficient to cause the firing pin to overcome its spring pressure and move forward to strike the primer of the chambered round.”
From a wonkish standpoint, I find this quite interesting. I would have liked a picture (or set of pictures) to go along with the explanation, though. Do we have any gunsmiths who can elaborate and clarify for us?
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On January 5, 2016 at 12:06 am, Jack said:
Herschel
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/i6H1tUP6IwM/maxresdefault.jpg and
http://users.skynet.be/HL-Editions/images/colt/80secu.JPG
should help
On January 5, 2016 at 6:10 am, Daniel Barger said:
In many pistols the pin is fired due to being held in tension by a spring. The safety mechanism is a moveable item such as a block of metal or lever that prevents the pin from moving till the trigger releases this mechanism. The magnetic field of an MRI can cause this mechanism to activate as if the trigger had been pulled because the metallic block or lever responds to the magnetism and moves as if the trigger had been pulled. This makes striker fired weapons and weapons akin to the 1911 where the hammer is held back and once released will fire the weapon capable of discharge in a high field strength magnet. Revolvers and DA type semiautos are not likely to fire
On January 5, 2016 at 7:22 am, Lina Inverse said:
Here’s the informative American Journal of Roentgenology article on the MRI machine that defeated Colt’s trigger block, Spontaneous Discharge of a Firearm in an MR Imaging Environment. This sort of stuff is legendary, I think there’s a video somewhere of an MRI machine capturing an oxygen tank, or of it wobbling in the center of the magnet afterwards.
On January 5, 2016 at 9:21 am, John Dough said:
“Having a gun or other metal object in the vicinity of an MRI machine would also be a violation of widely accepted medical and safety protocol,…”
I think only ferrous (magnetic) metal would be the concern, not any metal.
On January 5, 2016 at 12:15 pm, Archer said:
The staff in any credible imaging unit will have a patient remove ALL metal from his/her person, and store it in a cabinet down the hall from the MRI machine.
There’s more at risk than just ferrous metal flying around due to the magnetic field, although that is a danger (and the “base metal” used in inexpensive jewelry, while often nickel-based, can contain some trace iron). There’s also the matter of what magnetic fields do to conductive metals (i.e. most metals): generate electricity and electrical fields, which at the very least will interfere with the imaging.
To my knowledge, this has never been an issue, but then again, until now nobody in my knowledge had ever been dumb enough to take a gun into an MRI room. That doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen, or that it hasn’t already.
On January 6, 2016 at 9:32 am, Pat Hines said:
No objects containing ferrous metals are permitted in an MRI suite. A person was killed a few years ago when an oxygen tank, located on a gurney, was attracted to the MRI machine by the magnetic field. It hit the patient so hard, he suffered fatal injuries.
I can’t guarantee that the facility performing the MRI was thorough in its preventive pre-op questioning of the patient in this instance, but they should have screened him and locked up the weapon and any other ferrous metallic objects the patient may have had.
As an operating room nurse, I’m quite familiar with this sort of thing.