Unfortunate mishap with oxygen cylinder led to 2 hospital employees getting stuck in MRI scanner

In an unusual accident, two employees of the Tata Memorial Hospital's treatment and research centre in Khargar in Navi Mumbai, India, suffered injuries on Saturday evening when one of them walked into the centre's MRI room holding an oxygen cylinder, activating the machine's monstrous magnetic field. The two employees - one a technician and the other a ward boy - were pulled to the machine like a toy magnet pulls a pin and remained stuck to it for nearly four hours before an engineer arrived and deactivated the magnetic field. While the ward boy, Sunil Jadhav, 28, who took the oxygen cylinder into the MRI room, fractured his elbow, the technician Swami Ramaiah, 35, who was sandwiched between Jadhav and the cylinder on the one side and the MRI machine on the other, suffered serious injuries to the lower part of his body, including a punctured urinary bladder and severe internal bleeding.



Sunil and Swamy, who were rushed to Bombay Hospital, where thay are being attended to by a panel of six doctors - neurologist Dr Vibhor Pardasani, neuro-surgeon Dr Suneel Shah, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Pravin Munshi, nephrologist Dr Shrirang Bichhu, plastic surgeon Dr Vinay Jacob, and an intensivist. With blood flow to Swamy's lower body interrupted for four hours, leading to overload of toxins in the system, his kidneys too have suffered damage. Doctors said the sensation in his legs has been compromised because of damaged nerves. The mishap took place at around 7pm at the Tata Memorial-run Advance Centre or Treatment Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) when a male patient was wheeled in for a routine MRI. During the process of carrying out the scan, the attending doctor asked Jadhav to fetch an oxygen mask.



Jadhav, who had never worked in the MRI room and had no idea that no metal is allowed anywhere near the machine, thought he was asked to bring in an oxygen cylinder. As soon as he entered the room with the cylinder, the machine pulled him with such brute force that he flew towards the machine with the cylinder still in his left arm and carried Ramaiah with him. Before anybody in the room knew what was happening, Jadhav and Ramiah were stuck to the machine. And they remained glued to it four hours. While the machine can be switched off, deactivating its magnetic field is a complex process. Both Jadhav and Ramiah lost consciousness after a couple of hours of fruitless attempts to wrench them out. It was only after an engineer from General Electric, the machine's manufacturer, arrived and deactivated the magnetic field that the two could be disengaged and taken to Bombay Hospital.



Plastic surgeon Dr Vinay Jacob said Swamy's condition was critical when he was brought to the hospital. "His lower abdomen and upper thigh had got crushed. The blood circulation to the lower part of his body was severely compromised and the muscles and nerves in the thigh region were crushed," he said. MRI rooms in hospitals have notices outside asking employees and patients to leave all metal articles, including jewellery, outside. While such a note is pasted outside the ACTREC MRI room too, Jadhav obviously did not pay attention. One of the doctors, an eyewitness to the mishap, said hospital staff tried every trick to pull the two out. "ACTREC engineers to did everything they could to demagnetize the machine, but all in vain. It was only after a GE engineer detached the magnet from the machine that Jadhav and Ramaiah could be pulled out," he said. Deputy director, ACTREC, Dr Sudeep Gupta, said: "This is really an unfortunate incident. Thankfully, we were able to successfully rescue both our staff members and provide them timely treatment. We have already launched an internal inquiry to ascertain what went wrong."