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Doctor Curmudgeon® It Didn’t Stay in Sao Paolo!



 

Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

It has been oft said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But what happened in Sao Paolo on January 16 certainly did not stay there.

A Brazilian attorney, Leandro Mathias de Novaes did his duty as a loving son. He escorted his mother to get her MRI at the laboratorio Cura in Sao Paolo.

Novaes supported gun ownership and he had a license to carry and had registered his guns.

MRI…lest we forget;…the M stands for magnetic. And MRIs generate strong magnetic fields…very, very strong. Stronger than any magnets you may have laying around the house. According to GE, MRIs produce a magnetic field that is 140,000 times stronger than the magnetic field of our good old Mother Earth.

Lest we forget again: this powerful magnetic field is strong enough to pull the protons of your body into alignment,. So, ripping away a metallic object is no big deal.
Ferro metallic objects cannot, under any circumstances, be brought into the MRI scanning chamber.

Never, never forget this big no-no.

When you sign up for your MRI, you are warned by the personnel to avoid any metal on your person.

Since the MRI generates such a tremendous magnetic field, and is able to align those protons in your body, it certainly can pull away anything metal that you are foolish enough to bring in with you…and send those metallic things whooshing off into different and unpredictable directions.

You have to sign stuff saying you understand and have no metal object hidden away somewhere. They stay safely outside the chamber. Metal objects flying around the chamber are not healthy.
And so, Mr. Novaes had a gun hidden in his waist band as he went into the area of the MRI machine. For safety, you always have to assume that the magnetic field is on, even when there is no scan in progress. So, don’t bring your weapon into the room. Remember that the MRI is not your enemy and you won’t need to fight with it.

And, of course, the inevitable happened. The MRI machine was unaware that his gun was legal and licensed. It just did what it was supposed to do.

The Brazilian daily newspaper, Folha De S. Paulo reported that Novaes’ gun discharged due to the powerful magnetic field and he sustained an abdominal wound.

Novaes was rushed to the hospital but he did not survive.

He had signed forms stating that he agreed to follow the MRI protocol.

Ben Cost reported in the New York Post that a statement was released from the MRI center saying, “both the patient and his companion were properly instructed regarding the procedures for accessing the examination room and learned about the removal of any and all metallic objects.”

A tragic lesson.

Being curmudgeonly, I cannot help but wonder what the physician who signed the death certificate wrote.

Death by MRI?

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com

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