Your guide to a cardiac MRI

This film will show you what to expect if you are having a cardiac MRI scan.

I am Jackie [INAUDIBLE]. I live in Manchester. I’m here for an MRI scan. Long history of heart problems, two heart attacks. Here today to follow up to see what’s going on at the back of the heart. I have no problems with the MRI scan today. I’m just curious. I want to know what the next process is. My name is Mattea Schmidt. I’m the cardiogram service lead here at the University Hospital of South Manchester. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. This image allows us to see the structure and the function of the heart in great detail.

Safety checks will be performed prior to performing the study so that no metallic objects are brought within the vicinity of the scanner and into the scanner environment. In general, magnetic resonance imaging and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging are very safe. My name is Lenin Francis, and I’m a cardiac MRI radiographer.

For most of the patient’s, we normally give them a contrast or a dye. It’s just a colourless fluid. It’s to look at the heart muscles to see if there’s any scar tissues. Like basically, like if they had any previous heart attack or any viral infections.

Throughout the study, on average lasts between 35 and 40 minutes, the patient is asked to breathe in, breathe out, and at various stages to hold his breath, and beyond that, it is really only important that the patient lies very still. With respect to coronary stents, there are no issues with implanted coronary stents in the MRI environment. You OK, Jacqueline? Yeah. Just checking your blood pressure now. Because we are doing heart scans, we normally talk to the patients and we give them also breathing instructions. Breathe in. Breathe out. Hold your breath. The scans are really noisy. In order to protect them from the noise, we normally give them ear defenders.

Some of the patients who come for cardiac scans, they are claustrophobic. We do give them sedation, which is quite helpful for the patients. You OK, Jacqueline? I’m fine. Very well. I’m just setting up the next scan. If a patient comes and tells us that they’ve got a pacemaker, we normally don’t scan them, because it can actually cause damage to the patient. The MRI scan, as a process when it got more comfortable, you got used to your surroundings. Hopefully, I’ll pick up.

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