"WASHINGTON -- Federal health regulators are warning doctors that a class of injectable drugs used in MRI medical imaging scans can cause a rare and sometimes fatal condition in patients with kidney disease."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/10/fda-warns-of-deadly-side-_n_711895.html
Read this, found it was interesting, but many questions left unanswered. The major ones are "How often does this occur exactly?", "How certain are you on causality of the issue?", and lastly "What can be done to solve this?" I mean, they've got a couple alternative reagents out; but they only work for liver scans. I would like to see more information about how they know this information though and what they're doing to fix it.
It's funny most people would consider an MRI a procedure that is not invasive but I think it is saying something about the chemicals that are being injected into us. On the The International Center for Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis Research (ICNSFR) website MRI drugs are at the top of the list of causes. What is that chemical doing to a person's body? I mean even if you don't have kidney problems what is happening to your body that you don't know about?
http://www.pathmax.com/dermweb/
I did a little bit of follow up with a family member to determine what procedure is followed to minimize the risk of the more harmful side effects. One of my family members works in the radiology department in my hometown hospital. She's an x-ray technician and handles all of the scans that we discussed with the exception of the fMRI because those are generally kept at Universities for educational/medical purposes. Apparently (and I don't recall having done this, but I could be mistaken) there's a test done prior to receiving an MRI to test kidney functioning. If the kidney function is below a certain level (I didn't ask for the exact figure) they can't run the scan.