Thursday, November 03, 2011
MRI panceas
ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2011) — Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), an important diagnostic test, has traditionally been off limits to more than 2 million people in the United States who have an implanted pacemaker to regulate heart rhythms or an implanted defibrillator to prevent sudden cardiac death. Now, in a study published in the October 4 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, cardiologists at Johns Hopkins report that a protocol they developed has proved effective in enabling patients with implanted cardiac devices to safely undergo an MRI scan.
"We believe this is the largest prospective study of MRI in patients with implanted devices," says lead author Saman Nazarian, a Johns Hopkins cardiac electrophysiologist and an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"The guidelines we have published can be used to make MRI more available to people who could benefit from early detection of cancer and other diseases and for guiding surgeons during procedures. MRI is considered superior to CT scans in many clinical scenarios, especially for brain and spinal cord imaging," adds Nazarian. To date, more than 700 patients with implanted cardiac devices have safely undergone MRI exams at Johns Hopkins.
