605
Long Island man wearing 9kg-metal necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine
(www.independent.co.uk)
What an unfortunate chain of events
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
605 points (99.2% liked)
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You son of a bitch lol
Carrying a 9kg necklace seems a bit silly. Though I suppose "for weight training" could just as well mean something medical, like needing to build up muscle mass after an operation.
What I need to know is: how is a man that was "not supposed to be in the room" specifically getting fetched by a technician to go into the room? I would have said "do not go past the antechamber" a dozen times on the way there. Did the wife calling out to him just turn off his brain, did the technician fail to inform him, or did they both not realise the metallic necklace was on him?
After reading another article: nope, necklace was just a huge locket on a chain. And the wife said "Keith, Keith, come help me up" which sound to me like:
- wife was making a big fuss for no good reason (might have had a reason according to a 3rd article)
- husband obeyed as any good husband would
- technician didn't inform the husband that his wife would be carted out of the MRI room and failed to react fast enough
If I was married and a bit dumber, I could probably also be lured to my death with my name being called out twice in that fashion. Really depends how good the signage was and how well the husband was informed.
They have extensive screening and education and safeguard procedures, for the patients. I'm guessing hubby skipped (probably wasn't even offered) all those and just dashed in the door when called. Tech still should have put hubby through "the talk" if he was anywhere close to the door to the room.
MRI is one of the most sci-fi come to life technologies most people are likely to encounter in their lives. Superconducting magnets are about as non-intuitive as it gets, once they get you past the point of your ability to resist the force, there's no recovery - you're going faster and faster until the metal hits the housing. There have been multiple accidents with steel oxygen cylinders - for the obvious reason: they're so common in the environment where MRIs are used, and it's no small feat to get the cylinder removed.
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hes going to have neck problems if he had lived, 20lbs on the neck will cause spinal deformities, and disc disease.
Again, why aren't there metal detectors at the entrances to MRI machines everywhere? For the cost of those machines, the cost of a metal detector is peanuts
not at all practical. a big ol buzzer would have prevented this maybe, but really it's the relaxed culture around the MRI that let it happen. people need to be told either you don't go past the big heavy door with the NO METALS sign, or you get all the metal off you now, or both.
not at all practical
Simple question: why?
You put in a metal detector, and hell, a second door that won't open if metal was detected. These aren't the costs compared to the cost of a single MRI machine.
A - standard metal detectors probably won't work well right at the MRI room door. Some facilities may have a longer hallway for access and putting one there, far from the actual MRI suite, would make a lot of sense (I think I visited one location that had that layout), but not all facilities are laid out in a way that that could work.
B - the nature of how a metal detector works would probably have negative impacts on MRI image quality if it is too close to the imager - even outside the shield room door.
I did a sort of tour of a couple dozen MRI facilities for a couple of years, the stronger ones all have radio-frequency shield rooms complete with metal / gasketed doors that are supposed to be closed during imaging. Actual practice regarding keeping those doors closed was pretty loose in the places / times I was visiting. And, in the article's case it sounds like imaging wasn't in progress so the door was probably standing open...
I'm sorry but it can't be that hard to have an automated lock on the door. If metal detectors influence the machine, which is possible, then out them further away. Again, with MRI machines costing what they do, these aren't the prices you would worry about.
it can’t be that hard to have an automated lock on the door.
No, but human factors dictate: it can be that hard to use the lock properly.
out them further away.
Some places do this, other places don't have a good layout to make metal detectors a practical thing for the MRI suite.
with MRI machines costing what they do, these aren’t the prices you would worry about.
Often (depending on location), the most expensive part of the MRI suite isn't the device, but the room itself.
The man, 61, had entered the MRI room while a scan was underway
How was that allowed?
he asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table.
...while the machine was still working? And isn't that the job of the technician anyway?
the technician helped her try to pull her husband off the machine but it was impossible.
Those machines have a kill-switch for a reason.
I call this BS or a very incompetent technician.
Plus a Darwin award for the guy.
the high powered magnet is always on. it's never safe to put metal near and MRI.
The kill switch is VERY expensive to press, many thousands of dollars, and even when it does an "instant" magnet quench, by the time you hear the screams it's all over anyway, the metal has landed on the magnet. Quenching the magnet will make it let go, but it won't unbreak the neck bones.
Couple things:
The magnet is ALWAYS on.
The "kill switch" takes about five minutes to actually deactivate the magnet and it costs about thirty grand in helium every time you push it.
Not to mention it's not renewable. Once it his the upper atmosphere, you can't get it back.
It’s Helium, it’s not exactly rare.
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Surely 9kg necklace isn't something you can just sneak around with, how was he allowed to get close enough to an MRI machine in the first place wearing it?
Because hospital staff have better things to do than baby sit every person that walks in? They are pretty well known for always being overworked already.
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Did no one else read the story? I read it and it sounds moreso the clinic's fault
The necklace he was wearing was a steel weighted exercise band, not a normal necklace. He's not flexing his wealth or anything
His wife told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table. She said she called out to him.
Seems like the technician was told by the wife to bring her husband in to help her up. The technician/clinic made a mistake by letting in the husband, who didn't seem properly warned about MRIs no metal policy. The technician also somehow didn't catch the giant "necklace" he'd be wearing.
The "he wasn't supposed to be there" seems like a coverup for their mistake, since how else would he have known to go in? Someone must've told him to walk into the room, it's not like he could hear through the door.
Edit: 100% the technicians fault, the technician saw it. It even had a metal padlock.
They’d even discussed his training and the hard-to-miss chain with the MRI technician during their previous appointments, Jones-McAllister said.
“That was not the first time that guy has seen that chain” on her husband, she said. “They had a conversation about it before.”
I'm not saying it's the husband's fault, but I don't think it's 100% on the technician either.
I read it more like she asked the technician to get her husband and called out to her husband who presumably just walked in.
Also, "they discussed the chain on a previous visit" doesn't really change anything. Depending on how many people that technician sees and when that last visit was, they might've just forgotten.
When McAllister entered the exam room with the technician, the machine suddenly “switched him around, and pulled him in,” Jones-McAllister said.
This was part of the other article I linked. It's a lot of "they said she said" but I'm gonna put more faith in the victim's word and not the clinic's.
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He didn't see the new Final Destination movie.
So glad to find that Lemmy is even less empathetic than reddit was. Real faith in humanity killer. Shocking how many people decided to comment without touching the article, really proud to be here..
Welcome to the freely accessible internet. I'm sure there are "private message boards" with much more rigorous vetting of their participants, if that's what you need.
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