MRI for Patients with Pacemaker and Implantable Defibrillators

People with pacemakers often find it difficult to access MRI scans because historically pacemakers were not designed to go into MRI scanner, and therefore people with older devices were told they could not have MRI scans due to safety concerns. This would mean that patients would either have to have alternative scans (such as CT), which were less able to answer the clinical question, or patients would have to undergo invasive procedures including biopsies.

In the last 15 years however, device manufacturers have made pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators that are designed to be safe to be scanned. However, almost half the hospitals in the UK will not scan patients even with these newer devices because they require additional steps to be undertaken, including reprogramming of the pacemakers for the MRI and careful monitoring during the scan.

Alongside this, we also now know that providing careful safety protocols are followed, even patients with older non-MRI conditional devices can undergo scans at low risk. There are however very few hospitals in the UK who will scan patients with these devices.

We have built up considerable expertise and now scan patients with almost all types of cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators here at OneWelbeck.