Expert outlines grim reality of MRI's dangers after man with 20-pound chain dies in machine mishap: ‘Snap his neck'

New York Post

6 days ago

The Long Island man killed in a freak MRI accident stood no chance against the machine's magnetic field that pulled him in with enough force to 'snap his neck,' according to an expert in the field.
A 20-pound chain that Kevin McAllister was wearing around his neck would have been yanked into the machine at Nassau Open MRI with 'hundreds of pounds' of force, Dr. Emanuel Kanal told the Post on Tuesday.
'Even if he was standing there holding the chain in his hands, the strongest weightlifter would not be able to prevent this kind of an accident from happening,' said Kanal, director of Magnetic Resonance Service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
3 Keith McAllister, 61, suffered multiple heart attacks after he was sucked into an MRI machine by his 20-pound metal chain.
Facebook/Karim McAllister
'The problem is it's not a regular magnet, it's not a regular piece of iron. It's an unbelievably powerful magnet, and it's an unbelievably large piece of iron,' Kanal said, adding that the two factors resulted in 'hundreds of pounds of attraction in the direction of the magnet.'
McAllister was pinned to the machine for over an hour by the massive exercise chain fitted with a padlock that he wore when he was allegedly led into the machine room by an MRI technician to help his wife who was having her knee examined, his family said.
When he got 'within a few inches' of the machine, it could suddenly pull with 'such strength that it could have pulled sufficiently strongly to snap his neck,' Kanal said.
3 Family of McAllister claimed the 61-year-old was led into the machine room by a technician who did not tell the doting husband to remove his large metal chain.
Brigitte Stelzer
McAllister was pronounced dead at North Shore University Hospital the day after the bizarre accident with the cause being identified as three heart attacks, according to his family.
'[D]epending on the status of his health, he may have had problems with cardiovascular disease before, and when the excitement happened, he could have had a heart attack just from the event itself,' Kanal stated.
McAllister's wife described the haunting moments when her husband was breathing his last.
'His body went limp,' Adrienne Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island.
'He went limp in my arms and this is still pulsating in my brain,' she told the outlet through tears.
Despite decades in the medical industry, Kanal said the bizarre manner of death is incredibly rare.
3 The MRI machine could have pulled McAllister with enough force to snap his neck, an expert told The Post.
Brigitte Stelzer
'[It's] extremely rare that someone dies because of an interaction with a strong magnetic field — probably fewer than a dozen times since MRI first became a diagnostic tool in the early 1980s,' the expert stated.
His stepdaughter claimed the technician never warmed McAllister to take off the necklace that led to his demise.
'While my mother was laying on the table, the technician left the room to get her husband to help her off the table,' step-daughter Adrienne Jones-McAllister wrote in a GoFundMe.
'He forgot to inform him to take the chain he was wearing from around his neck off when the magnet sucked him in,' she wrote.