Wife of Keith McAllister, 61 year old man killed in MRI machine blames imaging tech for her husband’s death, after grabbing man to help assist wife off imaging table. But is Adrienne Jones-McAllister, right to blame Nassau Open MRI lab for the tragedy?
Whose to blame? The wife of a 61 year old Long Island man killed after being pulled into a MRI machine after entering a room while a scan was in progress, while wearing a heavy chain around his neck has blamed an imaging tech for the man’s death.
Keith McAllister, 61, was critically injured Wednesday afternoon at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, Nassau County, LI, after being violently drawn into the machine by the metal necklace he was wearing.
The man who is reported to have suffered a heart attack and possibly asphyxiated, died the following day at hospital according to Nassau County police.
61 year old was stuck in MRI machine for an hour after technician forgot to tell him to take off chain
Is 61 year old Long Island man to blame for his own MRI death?
His wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, had just completed an MRI on her knee and asked a technician to bring her husband in to help her off the table.
When McAllister entered the room – still wearing the 20-pound metal chain his wife said he ‘used for weight training’ – the machine’s powerful magnetic force suddenly pulled him in.
‘I saw him walk toward the table and then the machine just snatched him,’ Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island.
‘He went limp in my arms – and this is still pulsating in my brain.’
She alleged that the technician allowed her husband into the room despite the visible chain, which had been worn on previous visits to the same facility.
MRI tragedy that could’ve been averted
‘That was not the first time that guy had seen that chain. They’d had a conversation about it before,’ she said.
McAllister’s stepdaughter, Samantha Bodden also blames the technician for her stepfather’s premature death.
‘While my mother was laying on the table, the technician left the room to get her husband to help her off the table. He forgot to inform him to take the chain he was wearing from around his neck off when the magnet sucked him in,’ Bodden wrote on Facebook Friday.
Author caveat- shouldn’t the husband have known, given the numerous visits to the MRI clinic and his prior conversations with the tech, who probably warned against warning the metal chain, to not enter the room? Were there no signs, as is typical of MRI labs, strongly warning against wearing metal objects? Or had the husband ‘innocently’ assumed that the MRI machine was turned off after being brought over by the technician to assist his wife getting off the table?
Had the technician simply forgotten to warn the husband? Or had the husband hastened into the room before the technician could remind him to take the chain off? Or perhaps the technician had simply thought as a rational person, McAllister, would have known to have removed the metal chain of his own accord.
The risks and dangers of MRI machines
Bodden called reports saying that McAllister was not authorized to be in the room as false.
‘Several news stations are saying he wasn’t authorized to be in the room, when in fact he was because the technician went and brought him into the room,’ she wrote on a GoFundMe page organized to help cover burial expenses.
Jones-McAllister told News 12 that she had called out to her husband after asking the technician to get him.
She said the technician summoned him into the room, despite his wearing the heavy chain – an item they had even joked about on a previous visit, saying things like: ‘Ooooooh, that’s a big chain!’
When he got close to her, she said, ‘at that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in, and he hit the MRI.’
‘I said: “Could you turn off the machine, call 911, do something – turn this damn thing off!”‘ she recalled, as tears ran down her face. ‘He went limp in my arms.’
She added that the technician tried to help her pull McAllister off the machine, but it was impossible.
‘My mother and the tech tried for several minutes to release him before the police were called. He was attached to the machine for almost an hour before they could release the chain…’ Bodden posted on Facebook.
According to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, MRI machines use powerful magnets to scan bodies for diseases and ailments while producing images of ‘non-bony parts or soft tissues.’
MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, machines use powerful magnetic fields that require patients and physicians to remove jewelry and other metallic objects for safety reasons.
Authorities stress MRI accidents are rare, but they do happen. Injuries can range from minor burns and cuts to severe wounds and in very rare instances, fatal.
