MRI and the PM

MRI Conditional

by AgentX86 - 2020-09-10 17:08:54

It means lawyers run the world. The pacemaker itself has been tested to be MRI safe (under specific conditions) but ultimately it's up to your doctors if it'ssafe for you. If they say OK, it's on them.

Thanks

by bill328 - 2020-09-10 19:18:52

Thanks, Got it.

It's a *little* more complex than that.

by crustyg - 2020-09-11 03:18:12

The reason that they say it's MRI-conditional is that your PM has to be set into a specific mode in order not to be affected by a) the intense magnetic field of the MRI, b) the powerful radio-frequency excitation/explorer stimulation that does the actual work of making your tissues emit signals that are processed into images.  Both of these can have major effects on your PM and cause it to either overpace your heart, or worse, not produce enough pacing outputs (it can see some of these signals as natural heartbeats).

So you have to have a PM tech, with programmer for your manufacturer model, who sets your PM into this 'safe' mode before you go into the MRI suite, and then to restore your usual settings when you come out.

Hence why Agent and others warn against walk-in MRI services - they can't cope with any patients with a PM.  We have the same problem in the UK: where I live, most of the outpatient MRI scans are done in a facility that has no EP department, so can never cope with PM patients.  Actually getting an outpatient into the big hospital's MRI suite - where they still have to book an EP tech - takes months.

HTH.

This might help also which is for Medtronic pacing systems

by Gemita - 2020-09-11 05:30:36

These links certainly give full details of what is ideally required to keep us safe:-

https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/healthcare-professionals/mri-resources/implantable-cardiac-devices/patient-scanning-process.html

https://www.medtronic.com/content/dam/medtronic-com/01_crhf/surescan/uc201604719en-example-protocol-for-patient-scanning-process.pdf