So, I just joined a new company working as an EMT, which means I'll be working out of hospitals with which I am not familiar. Today I picked a patient up from getting an MRI, and I went through those doors that say "authorized medical personnel only" (and got excited that I am authorized medical personnel.) So I started wonder about MRIs.
I know pumps and MRIs don't play nice, but how close is too close? what kind of issues do MRIs cause with pumps?
when you pass the 5 gauss line you know you are in a bad neighborhood for your pump. There should be a "Danger" mag field sign at 2-5 gauss, as this is the limit for folks with pacemekers. in a MM pump, the pressure transducer gets damaged in the large field, so the pump loses it's ability to see a "no delivery" and eventually won't prime anymore. I think you'll actually do damage in the range of >>50+ gauss, but mag fileds change with the cube of the distance to the magent... so a lil bit closer and you could do the job.
I work with industrial NMR (MRI without the imaging) devices and just disconnect my pump and remove my wallet if i have to go into a high or unknown field. I've never damaged my pump... but I did erase all of my credit cards once. sucked.
congrats on the EMT job ajax.
Cheers
dropping pt's off and pick up rarely requires going into the MRI room (at least in my hospital) so that isn't usually a problem. HOWEVER, just because the MRI machine is not actively in use the magnet is always ON, so in reality, you should never go into the MRI room with your pump.
Thanks! I'm really enjoying it so far - I figured it would be easy enough to just disconnect, but I wasn't sure when I needed to worry about it. It seems like that 5 gauss line is the magic line - that's where animas and minimed say you should disconnect and leave the pump outside, from all the super limited research I've been able to find.