Reply With QuoteAsk the staff when you're there surely.
I’m by no means an expert in the running of the nhs,but can anyone explain to me why when you have an mri scan they only scan a certain area.
One of my daughters has leg pain on a regular basis,back in March she had an mri on her hip,which was fine ,now she’s having one on her knee.
Can anyone explain why they wouldn’t just scan the whole bottom half of your body ,it surely can’t be down to cost,if it is I don’t get it .
By the way this isn’t a moan at the nhs .
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Ask the staff when you're there surely.
Originally Posted by jukeboxs
They’ll only scan the specific body part requested by the referring clinician or vetting radiographer. It’s not Snappy Snaps.
OP have you asked your daughters GP or consultant what they’re looking for, it’s far better to look for a targeted area, an MRI is very time consuming and certainly isn’t cheap.
They are not wasting money.
Any MRI scan needs a subject specialist to interpret the results - if it's an orthopaedic issue in a knee they are looking at, it will be somebody with specialist knowledge on orthopaedics. The scan is not interpreted by the MRI scanner.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
you made a thread for this, really
Then just save the scan until (or if) required, no interpretation needed.
Because conditions/health problems change/develop. Scan needs to be current.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
My wife usually takes her when it’s midweek,she just goes with the flow,I’ll definitely be asking some questions.
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Certainly feel qualified to answer this as a radiology registrar.
As someone else eluded to, the scan needs to be interpreted by a Radiologist or reporting radiographer, the time of these highly skilled people is precious and expensive. Interpreting a whole leg will take twice as long as half a leg.
When you get a scan a specific questions needs to be asked so that the medical team can decide what question to answer. Although you might have two scans that are both MRIs, there are different sequences/settings based on what the question is.
Not only is the radiologists time precious, but also the scanner's time is precious, the waiting list for scans is huge, these scanners are in use 24/7 and still cannot meet demand. Scanning takes time, if you spend more time on each patient then less people can be scanned per day.
It is poor practice to scan without a reason, you may find something called an "incidentiloma" which may cause the patient needless worry.
In short, it would be madness to "just scan everything". Although this is a thing in the US if your insurance will cover it, which only adds to it being madness.
Also, while there is no ionising radiation dose with an MRI there are still certain hazards to take into account, radiology is always practiced with using the lowest possible dose of anything that can answer the question being asked.
My wife, who isn't medical, used to believe that when you have a blood test, they test for "everything" which obviously isn't the case and wouldn't be practical or economical. Same thing with scans.
Last edited by watchstudent; 3rd December 2022 at 21:36.
MRI isn't like an x-ray where a single image is taken or several are taken from various aspects, it involves taking a series of scans and then combining them to give the overall result for analysis. Taking each individual scan takes time, and so it makes no sense to scan beyond the area of interest - the machines are costly and in high demand. It's a simple time and money equation.
IIRC it took about 20 minutes to scan my knee a couple of years ago - I guess a whole leg would take somewhat longer and would have been superfluous for diagnosing the knee problem.
Okay, though in this case quite recent and presumably for the same, still undiagnosed, problem. Finding nothing in the hip could have presumably called up the knee scan and looked at that.
To answer the OP's question, could be that the clinician thought the problem was the hip and didn't consider it may be caused elsewhere.
I suspect the actual scanning time is relatively short compared to the changeover time between patients.
No, and no - see earlier post from a qualified person.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Often not the case with MRI.
Every minute is precious when there are people waiting for "is this cancer?" scans far longer than they should be.
Okay, fair enough, was just based upon my experience.
Is it not because of needless exposure to radiation?
No radiation with MRI scans. It's a massive magnet (often weigh up to 80 tonnes, if you are interested!). There are different hazards though to take into account.
In one way or another it is actually the most dangerous bit of kit in a hospital.
Last edited by watchstudent; 3rd December 2022 at 22:17.
Good answer above, watchstudent,
But the most dangerous item in the hospital is in my theatre!
Also to add: when looking for knee pain, particularly in a younger person, we look at the hip.
Knee pain can come from hip pathology.
MRI scans are time consuming and expensive, so we definitely don't just scan "everything"
They need a question to answer.
In many places geographically and anatomically, MRI scans are off limits (taken away) from GPs because of misuse.
I look at 20+ knee MRIs a week and I often see things that don't need treatment (false positives) or spot things that the radiologist has missed (false negatives)
Last edited by The Doc; 4th December 2022 at 08:45.
Bar radio waves…
That's not just an NHS thing - I had exactly the same recent experience privately through BUPA (the first pelvic scan was inconclusive, the subsequent lumbar scan wasn't). I don't see an issue with it - there's a necessary focus on the suspect area (presumably due to demand for the scanner and the time of those involved in the procedure) and sometimes an initial diagnosis can be incorrect.
Oh jeez. There are no folded bits of cardboard under the feet to level it up then
ok... ionising radiation...
My initial thoughts were they would do one scan on the whole of the lower body,look at the hip and if that was fine ,they would already have the scan of the knee if needed.
Meaning one appointment,anyway at 8.40 this morning the place was dead straight in and out ,no one to discuss anything so we’ll probably get the results in a couple of weeks.
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