Freak MRI Accident Kills Boy

(CBS)  It is a wonder of modern medicine. An MRI machine offers a noninvasive way to see highly detailed images of the inside of the human body. The "M" stands for magnetic.

And as CBS News medical correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin reports tonight, a child is dead because this basic force of nature met up with a basic human mistake.

It was a freak accident. A 6-year-old boy, killed while undergoing an MRI exam at the Westchester Medical Center in New York.

It wasn't the machine but human error, and hospital officials are calling it an unspeakable tragedy.

The MRI is basically a 10-ton magnet, and while the details are unknown, somehow a metal oxygen canister like this one was carried too near the machine while the boy was in it. The canister became a projectile and struck him in the head. He died Sunday.

The story has raised questions about MRI exams. The Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in neighboring New Jersey fielded phone calls today from worried patients. But in reality deaths--even injuries--linked to this procedure are extremely rare.

MRI exams are performed millions of times every year in the US. They are considered practically risk-free. But because of the powerful magnetic field generated by this machine, extreme precautions are taken to make sure metal objects don't come near it.

"We routinely screen patients to make sure they are not carrying any metal objects--that they don't have implanted objects," says Dr. Steve Yaron, a radiologist.

Special aluminum stretchers are used to carry patients into MRI rooms, and if oxygen is necessary most state-of-the-art hospitals have oxygen built into the wall or use nonmagnetic canisters designed specifically for MRI units.

"There's no reason to ever bring an oxygen tank into an MRI unit," says Yaron.

Westchester Medical Center is assuming full responsibility for what it calls a horrific accident, and state health officials are investigating. None that will of much comfort to a family that sent its child to the hospital to get well and lost him forever.
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