... as a Brazilian lawyer found out the hard way just the other day.
A Brazilian lawyer tragically died after his gun was discharged by an MRI machine’s magnetic field at the hospital.
The freak accident occurred on January 16 while the gun-loving lawyer, named Leandro Mathias de Novaes, was taking his mother to get scanned at the Laboratorio Cura in São Paulo, Jam Press reported. Unbeknownst to hospital staff, the attorney had a registered firearm in his possession.
Staff had reportedly asked the pair to remove all metal objects before entering the MRI room, as is protocol at hospitals due to the device’s powerful magnetic field. However, Novaes decided to go in sans announcing his concealed weapon.
Disaster struck after the machine yanked the weapon from his waistband, causing it to go off and strike the lawyer in the stomach. He was subsequently rushed to the São Luiz Morumbi Hospital, where he hung on for weeks, before eventually succumbing to his injuries on February 6.
There's more at the link.
I've had my fair share of MRI's over the years, and I've always been very careful to observe their warnings about not taking metal objects into the room with me. That's because there have been some spectacular accidents over the years, some of which happened to people I knew. The worst is a friend who picked up some pieces of shrapnel in his body years ago, about the same time I did. My pieces were fairly small, and most have worked their way out over time. However, a couple of his fragments were larger, and embedded themselves in bone. When the time came for his MRI, he forgot to mention them - and the machine literally ripped them out of his bone and right out through his skin. Blood everywhere, screams of pain, the lot. Fortunately, he survived, but he needed emergency surgery to close up everything - and the MRI operators needed lots of medication (presumably alcoholic) to get over their shock!
It's tragic that the lawyer died because he made a stupid mistake, but that's what happens when you decide that warnings don't apply to you. I guess it's like those who say that because the Second Amendment says they can be armed, they don't need to follow local laws restricting that. The cops won't ask about your views on the Second Amendment if they're called to deal with a "man with a gun" - they'll treat you as a potentially dangerous suspect, and if you don't do exactly as they tell you, you'll find that out the hard way. As Massad Ayoob told us during a class, "If the nice policeman asks 'Are you armed?', don't say 'Yes - want to see it?' and pull out your gun!"
Oy.
Peter
11 comments:
There are technical reasons to disarm and there are political reasons... There is a big difference!
Jonathan
The magnets used in these things are quite impressive. My wife is a PhD Chemist and worked in graduate school with a 500MHz NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrometer. An NMR is the SAME principle as an MRI, just for the MRI they got rid of the Nuclear in the name as it would scare Joe Everyday off (It is nuclear because it makes the various nuclei of the atoms vibrate). The magnets tend to be very powerful and involve superconducting magnets that need to be cooled with Liquid Helium. The lab room that had the main hardware for the NMR was in its own room with warnings to not have unsecured metallic items and no pacemakers (the magnetic fields will disrupt them possibly killing the owner). The room was ~10x15ft and you could stand in a corner and hold your car keys and the would float horizontally pointed at the giant Dewar flask that held the magnets, and you had better hold onto your keys or they'd probably go flying across the room.
There are technical reasons to be temporarily disarmed.
And never discount the stupidity of the self-important arse-hat.
Another thing they don't tell you is to make sure you leave anything that contains a magnetic strip (credit card) outside. I had a shoulder MRI'd with my billfold full of credit cards in the cargo pocket of my pants..... it wiped all of them. Brain said there is no metal in there.... it isn't a problem.....
Not the first time that an MRI machine has grabbed a handgun that was brought within it's effective magnetic field. The real question is why it fired. It would be interesting to know what brand/model it was.
Not sure if this idiot lawyer's demise is to be filed under happy endings or darwin award winner or both.
As info; it's rare the ferrous metal embedded in the body long enough to be encapsulated would be, and I've got to use scare quotes on this, "pulled out of the body". Otherwise this would be a weekly occurrence at VA hospitals across the nation. Normal risks for patients with embedded ferrous metal are if the metal is freshly placed and therefore non-encapsulated, or suspended in a liquid/semi-liquid medium (steel splinters from grinding or welding in the eye are a no-go with MRI units, as are any ferrous-based freshly placed stents or vascular clips, although those are rare now I believe.
Loose ferrous items *are* dangerous, and people get killed by oxygen tanks, tools, patient gurneys, etc. that aren't designed for the MRI environment. Do a web search for "MRI accidents" images ("Uttar Pradesh: Minister’s guard carries gun during MRI scan, ruins machine" is a good one). Objects adhering to the magnet housing often can be removed without venting all the liquid helium coolant to shut down the magnet, at above $10k a pop, and a couple days to re-establish the magnetic field after new coolant is shipped in. The magnet *always* on, unless the coolant is gone.
One last risk- don't wear your Tommy Copper magic bike shorts. Copper isn't attracted to the magnet, but the the magnet is there to flip the water molecules in your body back and forth on an axis to generate a signal that a computer uses to create the medical image. That also *can* generate a current in conductive wiring in the body, like pacemaker or spinal stimulator leads, or the copper strands alongside your heuvos, nerves, or vascular walls. Which then generates heat, sometimes enough to cause burns.
Something w/o a firing pin block/safety/plunger most likely... Taurus is made in Brazil.
Brazil, a pistol that discharges without pulling the trigger, must be a Taurus. They do go boom if you shake them hard.
Two knee replacements - mo MRI's here!!
I wouldn't say tragically died
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