MRI scanner sucks man to death

A 32 year-old Indian died at the weekend after being sucked into an MRI scanner at a hospital in Mumbai, local police said.
The tragedy happened on Saturday night when Rajesh Maru, 32, was jerked toward the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner by its magnetic force after he carried a metal oxygen cylinder into the room.
Preliminary reports suggested that the cause of death was the lethal liquid oxygen Maru inhaled when the cylinder broke after hitting the scanner, police in Mumbai said.
Maru’s family said he was visiting a relative in the Nair Hospital.
Then a ward boy asked him to help carry the oxygen cylinder into the room housing the MRI scanner.
The Times of India, quoting the victim’s kin, confirmed that he was asked by a ward boy to enter the room with the oxygen cylinder.
“When the family questioned if he could step inside the room with a metal object, the ward boy is said to have dismissed their doubts by saying, the staff do it every day”.
An MRI scanner uses a powerful magnetic field to produce images of the body’s organs.
The force of an MRI scanner is usually about 30,000 times as powerful as Earth’s magnetic field and 200 times stronger than a common refrigerator magnet.
Police said a doctor and a junior member of the staff have been detained for “causing death due to negligence”.
A similar accident happened in 2010 when an MRI scanner yanked a metal oxygen cylinder across the room and crushed a six-year-old’s head in New York.
Meanwhile, the Times of India reported that a team from Philips, the manufacturer of the MRI machine, will inspect it at the Nair Hospital as part of the probe into the death of the 32 year-old man, Dr. Ramesh Bharmal, the Dean of the hospital said.

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