NEW YORK, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Medical safety officials warn that careless accidents involving MRI scanners and their powerful magnets are on the rise.
Some mishaps, they say, have caused serious injuries and death.
Proliferation and power are part of the problem. The number of magnetic resonance imaging scanners in the country has soared from a handful in 1980 to about 10,000 now and magnets have quadrupled in power, The New York Times said.
While no one knows how many injuries have occurred, their growing frequency is prompting widespread calls for more regulation, experts say.
Safety guidelines drawn up by the American College of Radiology in 2002 and revised last year "have no teeth and are floating out there in intellectual Never-Never Land," Tobias Gilk, a Kansas City, Mo., architect who designs medical scanning rooms, said.
"The X-ray in your dentist's office is more heavily regulated," he said.
