The Reading Room Podcast: A Closer Look at Remote MRI Safety, Part 3

As a neuroradiologist and a pilot, Emanuel Kanal, M.D., noted that one of the safety principles he learned from the aviation field and has applied with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) safety is the notion that an emergency situation is a statistical inevitability. Accordingly, one must have a proactive plan for addressing the emergency before it occurs, emphasized Dr. Kanal during a recent Diagnostic Imaging podcast.

“ … What do you do when communication goes down and you're in the middle of a scan. Do you stop the scan? Do you complete the scan? What does the boots on the ground (person) do if they lost communication? What was the last command given? What was the last thing happening? Am I supposed to continue? That's a critical part of remote MR scanning and the standard operating procedure,” emphasized Dr. Kanal, chief of the Division of Emergency Radiology and director of Magnetic Resonance Services with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Noting the importance of defined roles and responsibilities with remote MRI safety, Tobias Gilk, MRSO, MRSE, rejected the commonly espoused platitude that MRI safety is everyone’s responsibility.

“No, it’s not. The notion that this is some kind of collective group project that we're all working on is one of the greatest disservices that we can do to MRI safety,” posits Gilk, the founder of Gilk Radiology Consultants, a senior vice president of RADIOLOGY-Planning, and a board member of the American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety (ABMRS).

Gilk maintained that proactive precision with individual scopes of responsibilities and checklists is critical to bolstering safety with remote MRI scanning.

“It is in the act of defining individual roles, duties, responsibilities, expectations, and crystalizing that that we begin to build workflows that don't have gaps,” noted Gilk.

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “The Reading Room Podcast: A Closer Look at Remote MRI Safety, Part 1,” “The Reading Room Podcast: A Closer Look at Remote MRI Safety, Part 2” and “MRI Safety: A Closer Look at Key Factors in Managing Radiofrequency Exposure.”)

For more insights from Emanuel Kanal, MD and Tobias Gilk, MRSO, MRSE, listen below or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.