What does it mean to have a “series of heart attacks”
Anyway I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. It is also terrible for the wife who had to watch her husband die.
Edit:
Better source: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/20/health/mri-machine-death-long-island
Even that article fails to mention if and when the magnet was quenched.
He didn’t see the new Final Destination movie.
Easy solution : have a pure gold necklace, since gold isn’t magnetic
9kg of gold is worth close to $1mill. Mr T is baller enough to do that
The best part about Mr. T’s gold necklaces is that he got the idea from working a bouncer. The man became a literal living mannequin, holding onto people’s gold chains like some kind of ass-kicking coat check.
Apparently the chains started when he was a bouncer. Sometimes people would lose them, while getting kicked out. He would wear them, so that had to come and ask him politely for them. His collection built when they were either too scared, or too egotistical to ask for them back.
That’s the story he told the news in the 80s after he was famous…
If you don’t think Mr T was playing Debo, I don’t know what to tell you.
IIRC Mr T stopped wearing his gold chains because he came to feel that they were tone deaf.
it mustve been ferrous material, because gold isnt super magnetic. like steel or iron.
Moving fields, eddy currents still apply.
Copper isn’t magnetic either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu1uRvErM80
Well, TIL. There goes my hopes of showing up to the MRI room with a giant gold necklace
Ehh, if you’re gonna go, it’ll at least be memorable :) I suspect we’ll both pass without even a lemmy shitpost.
Easier solution: take off your damned metal necklace.
18kt gold is an alloy with 75% gold and other metals that may be magnetic. I wouldn’t trust a gold chain around my neck with an MRI.
So, an all aluminum chain then?
#Fashion
Was the necklace even related to the death? It says he had a “series of heart attacks” which doesn’t sound like something caused by being pulled toward the machine.
If the necklace impeded blood flow or even put a lot of strain on his circulatory system then it could have caused his heart attacks.
Sounds like it wasn’t him being pulled towards the machine that killed him, it was being pinned against the machine for a prolonged period of time.
yeah what annoyed me was the Lady asking to just turn it off like you can just turn it off. i know she is desperate to undo her and her husband’s stupidity but the article framing those quotes like the tech was incompetent is bad journalism.
They come with an emergency stop button
Can you imagine watching your loved one suffer and die in front of you? It sounds extremely brutal
You absolutely can turn it off - it’s called quenching the magnet, and the tech absolutely should have been trained to do that in an emergency. There was no way in hell they were physically pulling him off. It’s obviously that they did eventually, but the article doesn’t say how long it took 🤷♂️ to be fair, I’d bet that basically all of the damage was done up-front, regardless - MRI magnets are so much stronger than most people realize.
Dude was wearing a 20lb chain while his wife was getting an MRI.
She freaked, and yelled for him, and he ran into the room while the machine was still on and fucking died.
This is 100% their fault, I could almost see an argument that the door needs a lock to prevent idiots with 20l s of metal around their neck from running in, but you don’t want to lock everyone out in case there’s an issue.
I’m just thinking about the poor woman. She’s forever going to be haunted with the knowledge that she was the one who called him into the room, and thus led to his death. His decision to come in wasn’t thought out, but that probably won’t relieve her feelings of guilt for having called him in. Such a tragic story.
Uh she was in the room likely still on the bed laying down considering the story given. So like she’ll have some rowdy memories of dude getting mushed into a machine a speed then slowly suffocate if they weren’t lucky enough to hit their head really really fucking hard.
She’s not going to have one whit of self awareness. I may be going out on a limb here, but it doesn’t sound like he was exactly the sharpest bulb in the ocean, and her reported cry to “turn off” the MRI (despite the repeated screenings you get prior to an MRI, warnimg patients about metal) indicate she isn’t either. She’s 100% gonna blame the provider and sue, adding to the rising cost of healthcare.
Aren’t you just a shining beacon of logical, data-driven level-headedness. The fuck is she supposed to do, mentally recite each sign she saw on her way in as her spouse is being crushed before to determine if her request is feasible? Crawl out of the MRI, past her dying partner, and go read the manual to see if the MRI has an emergency stop capability before asking the technicians to intervene?
I wish you the best in your future human interactions. I hope very few of them are life-threatening because clearly, you’ll be of no help if you deem the situation avoidable or deem help unlikely to be successful.
This is a really unempathetic response. I know shit’s tough right now and there are a lot of fools out there, but I beg you to at least try to give the benefit of the doubt and try to think through why people might do the things they do, especially when it’s someone enduring a personal tragedy that’s being publicly scrutinized. Think about the poor old woman who had hot coffee spilled on her crotch at a drive through and endured agonizing disfiguring burns - McDonald’s ran a campaign to paint her as a scammer and opportunist when she had done nothing wrong at all.
Most people don’t intentionally endanger themselves or their loved ones and they are usually very deferential to authority, especially in medical settings. There’s nothing to indicate this was any more than a miscommunication involving a heavily blinged-out guy who did nothing wrong. The MRI folks didn’t think to brief him because he wasn’t in the danger zone. His wife called for help. Maybe a very observant doctor could have noticed the guy’s jewelry and gave him a warning. Maybe the wife could have recalled that her husband was wearing metal before calling for him. Maybe the doctors could have better screening procedures for people in the waiting area, or better procedures to control access to the MRI room. I can’t say based on the available information that anyone lacks self awareness or did anything obviously wrong here. Sometimes a lot of coincidences line up to make something terrible happen.
Don’t forget to pay the repairing fee for the machine
There is a lot of conflicting information in the articles im finding about this incident, from her shouting and him running in to him entering the room with the technician, and the technician knew about the chain and had commented on it.
Lmk if you need some examples, but theres a lot.
Im (cynically) inclined to believe that the hospital were the first to give statements and did a quick its-not-our-fault response. Then more people were interviewed. Ill always side with the working class (imo everyone who is not ruling class) rather than the corporations. And in the US the hospital is a corporation for sure.
There’s some gross racial spin surrounding this too, see pic below. It was a weighted padlock steel necklace for his weight training, not whatever is implied by yahoo.
That door should absolutely be locked while in operation. That door being forced open should be an e-stop event.
Someone could walk in there with a firearm or a bowey knife or anything.
Then the door will always be locked, unless the MRI is being serviced, as the magnet is always active. Kinda kills the point of the machine, no? That said they could put in more safeguards for sure. Though you would think all the signs on and near the door, and the extensive explanation you get, would be enough. But here we are.
No, signs aren’t enough obviously. This is definitely not the first time we’ve heard of stories of people coming in with guns, chairs what have you.
It’s not everyday, so maybe it’s not warranted… But if you look at the things we apply security to we secure against a lot of things that never happen
Given the apparent danger of the device. There’s still plenty of options for security.
How about a set of man trap doors and a metal detector. The outside pair is unlocked. When you step through the metal detector, If a safe amount of metal is detected the outside door is locked and the inside doors unlock.
You don’t need a very sensitive metal detector The extra construction around two doors, and a small door controller / locks would be super insignificant to the price of the machine.
If you use cam locks the emergency egress would still be fine. Maybe you’d need to sense the outer door being shut to make sure somebody doesn’t hold the door for someone else.
You could put an airlock like metal detector door that only opens the second door, if the first door is closed and there’s nothing magnetic inside. People could still go in quickly in emergencies, but nothing that makes it worse can enter.
As much as the machines cost, something like that wired up with a metal detector so that if the machine is on and there’s metal in the airlock it will never open would actually be a good solution…
But it would take a society that values human life and absence of suffering over money. Because like someone else pointed out, the hospital ain’t the one paying to fix the machine.
Maybe Canada would be interested?
idk, maybe the hospital has insurance for idiocy. But the people that broke it almost certainly can’t afford an MRI machine, so they ain’t paying.
This basically never happens. You want to spend billions guarding against humanity stupidity? Good luck with that.
But it would take a society that values human life and absence of suffering over money.
🙄
deleted by creator
Thanks for the info!
Honestly tho, it’s pretty crazy they let dude roam around a hospital with 20lbs of chain around his neck. That’s literally a deadly weapon.
I don’t care what story he gave, he should have been told to leave it in his vehicle.
i wonder if he had neck pain, to carrying that much weight on his neck.
You could spend billions to implement crazy solutions for every possible scenario.
Or you could just tell the guy not to go in there.
“When you make something idiot-proof, the world builds a better idiot.”
You can idiot proof anything but the world just makes better idiots
That would not cost billions. Not even close. It would certainly be far cheaper than the cost of repair.
That would not cost billions. Not even close. It would certainly be far cheaper than the cost of repair.
“I have no idea what I’m talking about so I’ll just assume everything is cheap and easy”
Did you forget that thousands of hospitals exist just in the US? Or at least did before 2025.
Not all of them have MRI machines, and regardless of its cheaper than repairing them.
Hundreds probably do though. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening. I think it’s probably exceedingly rare. I had an MRI and the number of times I heard and read the warnings about metal was exhausting. It feels almost impossible that someone could not know about that specific danger.
Nah, let them stupids die. I don’t want to risk non idiots lives for the chance of saving a moron.
I apologize if im completely misunderstanding, but what “non idiots” are at risk, in what circumstances? Shouldn’t there always be a tech?
No apology necessary.
There are emergencies that could happen anywhere, including in an MRI room. Dealing with emergencies, ease of ingress and egress is paramount.
The proposed solutions would hamper access to these rooms during emergencies, putting patients and techs in harms way (the non idiots), in the name of preventing a moron from giving themselves a Darwin award.
I think it would be a net negative, ie. more people would die/get hurt trying to make an idiot proof enclosure.
Metal detector on the door to the room.
this seems like the obvious solution to me and it’s kinda wacky that it’s not already standard, just have a loud as fuck alarm go off if metal goes through the first door leading to the general scanner area.
just gotta have enough distance between the detector and the scanner, so there’s time for people to intervene.
His wife told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table. She said she called out to him.
Where does it say he ran in? I mean, what you say sounds right, but this doesn’t read like “freaking out”
Edit: Sounds like she did not freak out, but called to him to help her stand up after it was complete (bad knee), but before he was authorized to enter. This seems more like an honest mistake and tragedy. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/20/health/mri-machine-death-long-island
So glad to find that Lemmy is even less empathetic than reddit was. Real faith in humanity killer. Shocking how many people decided to comment without touching the article, really proud to be here…
Welcome to the freely accessible internet. I’m sure there are “private message boards” with much more rigorous vetting of their participants, if that’s what you need.
So, if the MRI spins at 12 RPM, does the dude also spin at 12 RPM?
Asking for a friend.
Just going through comments spreading MRI information (source: I work with MRI scanners). Nothing is spinning inside the MRI machine. CT scanners have an internal spinning component, but MRIs do not.
Thank you, I actually did not know that. While we are at it: what is causing the sounds? And how often do those machines have to be calibrated, as I believe the RF receivers (?) have to be super sensitive and accurate.
The sound is caused by ‘gradient coils’ that are being switched on and off at kHz frequency, which is in the audible range for humans. The sound is caused by those coils vibrating due to the interaction of the magnetic field with the electric current in the coils: they’re non magnetic but they still feel the ‘Lorentz force’. As far as calibration, there is a pre-scan step (which is one reason why MRIs can take awhile) used to optimize the RF settings to each patient. Patients come in many shapes and sizes so the settings have to be tuned to get a good image every time. I’m actually not sure of how often they need to be serviced, but it seems like the manufacturers are here checking on the machines pretty often!
The detector spins around the patient, but does the magnetic field spin too? I though not, but I’m not that certain.
Nope, the detector is separate from the magnet - the magnet encircles the patient completely, and doesn’t move. I’m sure the magnetic field is affected slightly by the rotating machinery, but that should be consistent and predictable, and would be accounted for in the imaging algorithms.
Oh, TIL. Thanks!
Yeah I considered the supercooled electromagnert couldn’t possibly rotate, but I wasn’t sure if it could be modulated to change field directions or something. Didn’t seem very likely. Thanks for the confirmation.
I imagine his head was plucked like a ripe tomato in the garden.
I doubt it, obviously depending on the applied force.
Skin is rather tough to rip with a blunt tool so yeah, maybe the head was disconnected from the spine immediately, making him look like a giraffe spinning at 12 RPM round and round.
Honestly fuck this website
Nope. Tomato theory hold up better.
It really sucks, but of course it was an idiot from Nassau county 🙄
For anyone who might not know the area, Nassau County is the place that gave us George Santos. It is burgundy-red, only bested in racism by Suffolk county. The police departments are notoriously racist and will pull you over and interrogate you just for driving a beater. This was one of Trump’s favorite police departments during his first term, he infamously told them to bash people’s heads against their cop cars when arresting them.
Sadly there are many very left leaning people trapped on Long Island, unable to leave because LI is an employment wasteland. It’s not cheap to live on LI either.
Anyways, an idiot from Nassau won’t be missed.
Do not forget it was LI was basically kkk hq for a while.
To be fair this seems like a honest oversight
He entered the imaging room unauthorised. It was an honest Darwin Award
Wearing a NINE kilogram necklace.
That’s like approaching a campfire with clothes made out of tinder after soaking in some gasoline and drinking alcohol.
…someone probably should’ve stopped him
You don’t know what you don’t know. He probably wasn’t even thinking about how MRI machines work.
The technician let him in. There was an oversight somewhere but we don’t really know the details. Was the necklace under his shirt, was the receptionist on break, etc etc
That’s nothing. Remember the guy who brought his gun with him and the machine helped him shoot himself?
I think it was a cop too. Mri machines doing a service to humanity
It appears you’re right. But appears the LAPD has had this happen to them as well in a bungled cannabis raid
I remember that one. The cop was stupid enough to get his gun snatched, and then he was stupid enough to quench the MRI for that!
Here’s the docket for the resulting court case. In their response this year the LAPD seem to have summarily denied everything.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69172475/noho-diagnostic-center-inc-v-city-of-los-angeles/
In typical cop fashion
Carrying a 9kg necklace seems a bit silly. Though I suppose “for weight training” could just as well mean something medical, like needing to build up muscle mass after an operation.
What I need to know is: how is a man that was “not supposed to be in the room” specifically getting fetched by a technician to go into the room? I would have said “do not go past the antechamber” a dozen times on the way there. Did the wife calling out to him just turn off his brain, did the technician fail to inform him, or did they both not realise the metallic necklace was on him?
hes going to have neck problems if he had lived, 20lbs on the neck will cause spinal deformities, and disc disease.
After reading another article: nope, necklace was just a huge locket on a chain. And the wife said “Keith, Keith, come help me up” which sound to me like:
- wife was making a big fuss for no good reason (might have had a reason according to a 3rd article)
- husband obeyed as any good husband would
- technician didn’t inform the husband that his wife would be carted out of the MRI room and failed to react fast enough
If I was married and a bit dumber, I could probably also be lured to my death with my name being called out twice in that fashion. Really depends how good the signage was and how well the husband was informed.
They have extensive screening and education and safeguard procedures, for the patients. I’m guessing hubby skipped (probably wasn’t even offered) all those and just dashed in the door when called. Tech still should have put hubby through “the talk” if he was anywhere close to the door to the room.
MRI is one of the most sci-fi come to life technologies most people are likely to encounter in their lives. Superconducting magnets are about as non-intuitive as it gets, once they get you past the point of your ability to resist the force, there’s no recovery - you’re going faster and faster until the metal hits the housing. There have been multiple accidents with steel oxygen cylinders - for the obvious reason: they’re so common in the environment where MRIs are used, and it’s no small feat to get the cylinder removed.
Uhm, article I read said it was a training accessory and the wife had fallen on the floor and needed help.
But the husband was called to get her off the table? Did she fall while the technician was away? Shouldn’t there have been a 2nd person to supervise her, or is that too expensive? And she did help in trying to get him unstuck, so she could get up on her own then? How are there so many important details to this?
That’s it, as fun as it is to speculate, I think I’ll reserve my judgement until after this has gone to court.
The major failure in this case was lack of education / restraint of the husband. Before he got within 25 feet of the MRI room door, he should have had “the talk” about metal objects and MRIs not mixing, deadly consequences, etc. Other things could have helped, but I suspect the local safety procedures are patient focused and hubby didn’t get properly educated before entering the danger zone.
9 kilograms Necklace?! What kind of necklace is that?
A chain with a 9kg bell weight.
This was not Mr. T.
This was Mr. D Capitated.
Ooh mind you don’t cut yourself on all that edge!
Who cares about a moron who needs a 9kg necklace, how’s the MRI machine?
It was for weight training
Yes, I remember the part in Pumping Iron, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, where he was using a 9kg necklace in preparation for his role in The Terminator.
This is stupid. He knew his wife was getting an MRI. He was an irresponsible ass and ignoramus. What was more important? His wife’s MRI or his precious necklace weight training, at 61 no less?
And he had multiple heart attacks? The picture of health.
And now a MRI machine is out of order, how many people’s tests have to be rescheduled for one 61 year old’s fantasies of being a weight training badass? Your wife needed an MRI, put the high school jock nonsense aside for an hour or two.
“It was for weight training”. Fuck me.
Why are you being this way
Let people enjoy the bling they earned.
He can enjoy it at home. He could if he were still alive I guess.
Don’t know how quickly custom vinyl stickers can be bought & delivered, but someone needs to slap a “Died Like A Cartoon Character” achievement on his casket/headstone.
put one on the MRI. how many of them actually score a fatality?
Kind of like Tilikum, responsible for 3 of 4 known human deaths by an orca.
I’m rooting for the orca in the med that are eating rudders. Dunno why, I just think they’re neat.
Heck yeah! And they apparently have been teaching other pods how to do it.
ok pod, in today’s class we’re gonna talk about control surfaces - what good is a boat that can’t steer? billy stop clubbing that seal right this moment and pay attention
True winner of a Darwin award
The man, 61, had entered the MRI room while a scan was underway
How was that allowed?
he asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table.
…while the machine was still working? And isn’t that the job of the technician anyway?
the technician helped her try to pull her husband off the machine but it was impossible.
Those machines have a kill-switch for a reason.
I call this BS or a very incompetent technician.
Plus a Darwin award for the guy.the high powered magnet is always on. it’s never safe to put metal near and MRI.
Couple things:
The magnet is ALWAYS on.
The “kill switch” takes about five minutes to actually deactivate the magnet and it costs about thirty grand in helium every time you push it.
Not to mention it’s not renewable. Once it his the upper atmosphere, you can’t get it back.
It’s Helium, it’s not exactly rare.
Isn’t it an electomagnet?
it costs about thirty grand in helium every time you push it.
Oh, right, i forgot human lives have a price in the US.
I’m sure he was barely trained and had specific instructions to “never push that button!” When you whole life in the country is tied to your employment, it’s every moron for themselves.
The US is an outlier in how it charges prices for healthcare services.
But every country in the world has prices charged for cold liquid helium. It’s very expensive to gather, process, store, and ship, regardless of what kind of health care economics apply in your country.
And in fact, doesn’t the US have most of the world’s supply of helium?
Not just the helium, there’s a considerable time spent “recharging” the magnet with electricity - many patients will lose access to MRI scan service during the multiple days it is down for recharge.
Dont they loose the access to the machine anyway for few day? Im under impression metal slamming to the machine usually breaks it pretty good.
Well, the thing is, to kill the magnetic field within a few seconds would break the machine, so they don’t do that because it would up the cost of a shutdown from tens of thousands of dollars to several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the downtime would go from several days to potentially several months.
As it is they “quench” the superconducting electromagnet, which then requires a large amount of LH2 and electricity to get going again. I have heard numbers like $30,000 to get the magnet running again, not counting lost revenue during the many days it takes to get going.
Well the thing is still that the weighted necklace pulled by 1.5 to 3 tesla towards the machine will also put it the machine out if comission from several days to several months.
Also the down time of the machine depend from so many things like availbility of components, logistics and the actual damage happened, that even the most pragmatic operator could never calculate the price of the repair versus the value of the possibility of saving human life.
FFS the saved 30k only buys pretty decent slightly used car. Its sick to even start to weight that kind of money to human life.
Its a superconducting magnet that cannot be instantly shut off. I am sorry that the physics of this makes you so angry.
Depends on the machine type. Closed bore machines (the vast majority) use supercunducting electromagnets that are surrounded by liquid helium that creates a very strong magnetic field. To demagnetize them requires dumping the helium.
Some open bore machines use electromagnets, but they’re much less common and not as powerful.
So the helium itself becomes magnetized, is that it?
the helium is liquid, which it only is when it is very very cold.
The superconductor will keep it’s magnetic field forever, as long as it’s superconducting, and it will stay superconducting while it is very very cold.There is physically no way (as in, it is simply impossible, due to how our world works, not money, not people, not technology) to instantly “switch off” the magnet.
it needs to go above a certain temperature, to lose it’s superconducting nature, and it needs to do it at a pace that doesn’t dump a GINORMOUS amount of energy in this magnetic field instantly, because that would be even worse.
the fault here is in allowing anyone with any magnetic metal anywhere near an MRI. And whoever let that happen is going to have a very bad week.
No, the liquid helium cools the magnets to the point where they become superconductive. As to how that works exactly, I do not know. I don’t think I have the math for it.
It’s a super conducting electromagnet, and if you quench it instantly pieces would be flying all over the room
It’s not an electromagnet, it’s a superconducting magnet. And turning it immediately off makes it melt.
It’s both! MRI magnets are electromagnets that are cooled down to 4 Kelvin using liquid helium. Once they reach those low temperatures, they become superconducting. This way, the magnet isn’t gobbling up tons of electricity to stay at the desired field strength. Instead, the liquid helium needs to be replenished occasionally to keep it at superconducting temperature. Source: I work with MRI scanners.
TIL, thanks
The kill switch is VERY expensive to press, many thousands of dollars, and even when it does an “instant” magnet quench, by the time you hear the screams it’s all over anyway, the metal has landed on the magnet. Quenching the magnet will make it let go, but it won’t unbreak the neck bones.
As if my claustrophobia wasn’t enough reason to irrationally strongly dislike the idea of needing to get an MRI again…
