The long awaited results from the Magna-Safe study were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, and it was good news for pacer and implantable cardioverter–defibrillator (ICD) patients! When proper precautions have been taken, MRIs were found to be safe in patients implanted with certain older pacemakers or ICDs.

In order to study the safety of scanning these patients, doctors set up a prospective registry for patients undergoing MRI in scanners with a magnetic field strength of 1.5 tesla who were scanned despite having a non-MR conditional device (i.e. a device which had not been deemed safe for MRI scanning by the FDA).

MRIs were performed on 1000 patients with pacemakers and 500 patients with ICDs and the results of the study showed that as long as appropriate patient selection and safety protocols were followed, patients had no problems with the MRI scans.

This is indeed good news for those of us with older devices who may be in need of MRI scans. To read about my own experiences and investigation of this issue, read my previous blog entry YES WE SCAN! ICDs and MRIs.