Patient safety


Christine Saunders, clinical services manager of the Radiography Department, and Steve Ross of the Foundation Trust, with Winchester’s Mayor, Cllr Ernie Jeffs, centre, during a tour of the CT/MRI facility following the official opening.


The building’s architect, Roger Lewis,


and an art consultant, co-ordinated the colour scheme within to complement furniture ordered for the unit by lead radiographer, Steve Ross.


Nobody immediately aware Looking back, however, at the fire in 2011 that necessitated the new facility’s construction (the cost of the new imaging suite, and of upgrading fire protection measures across the Foundation Trust’s estate is put at £10 m), and the subsequent investigation indicated that a fire may have been burning in the roof void of the ‘old’ imaging building for around eight hours, but that, until the smoke was seen, nobody realised it had taken hold. Around 100 firefighters fought the blaze


– which was reported at about 4.40 in the afternoon – and prevented it spreading. However, the strong magnetic field from the MRI magnet complicated the brigade’s task, since there was a high risk that any hand-held equipment taken into the smoke-filled MRI room would simply be ‘ripped’ from firefighters’ hands.


MRI ‘irreparably damaged’ While there were no human casualties, the MRI scanner was irreparably damaged, and, due to the need for the magnet’s core to ‘warm up’ for the magnetic field to substantially weaken, a process which would only occur if the unit was left for a significant period, the scanner could not be switched off for a further two weeks. The collapse of part of the building’s roof over it, however, provided something of protective shield, as a small ‘hotspot’ continued burning close to the machine


72 Health Estate Journal September 2013


Shown within the new imaging suite, immediately after its official opening, are (left to right) Adrian Davies and Simon Collinge of Metrasens; Dr Jeremy Hogg; the chair of the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Elizabeth Padmore, and Steven Brine MP.


for some days. The hospital’s CT scanner, located in a separate room, was left undamaged.


Overheating cooling fan Dr Hogg said of the fire and its immediate aftermath: “The apparent cause was an overheating cooling fan within the roof void. As soon as staff were alerted to the fire, all patients and staff were evacuated, and the fire brigade called. The firefighters had the fire pretty well entirely extinguished by around 1.00 am the following day. There did, however, remain a small ‘hotspot’ around the (‘by then mangled’) MRI machine’s magnet, which could not be put out for some time.With the magnetic field still active, any metal objects that firefighters took into the room – and indeed this actually occurred with a 20 kg wrecking bar – would also simply be pulled from their hands.”


Dr Mark Keene, Metrasens’s CTO, was in the US in 2001 when he heard about a nine-year-old boy being struck on the head by a stray oxygen cylinder mistakenly carried into an MRI suite during his scan.


Liquid helium cooling Dr Hogg explained that the 70-mile long metal coil that forms the superconducting magnet in an MRI scanner is surrounded by liquid helium, which cools it to –273˚C. This reduces the magnet’s electrical resistance to nil, and thus generates a strong magnetic field. To render this field inactive, it is necessary to substantially increase the helium’s temperature, and thus that of the coil. Dr Hogg said: “So badly damaged, however, were the electric ‘quencher’ control buttons on the MRI unit normally used to initiate this process – by allowing release of the helium through a blast plate in the top of the scanner – that the firemen could not operate them. The magnet therefore had to be left on, both for the coil to warm up, and for the helium supply to deplete, at which


stage the magnetic field would weaken so much that it would cease to be a concern. Since the incident, I believe several MRI scanner manufacturers have incorporated mechanical override switch-off mechanisms into their machines, alongside the usual electrical ‘power off’ buttons, as a ‘failsafe’.”


Maintaining continuity Once the fire was extinguished, an immediate concern for the Trust was how to maintain the continuity of its CT and MRI scanning. Dr Hogg said: “Fortunately, Alliance Medical stepped in and supplied two separate trailer-mounted mobile scanning units, one housing a CT scanner, and the other an MRI. Once the fire was out, and the area declared safe, a monumental effort by a sizeable Trust team saw the rooms in the fire’s immediate vicinity thoroughly cleaned and made ready for re-use.” Simultaneously, Dr Hogg explained, the Foundation Trust’s estates team built covered temporary walkways connecting the existing hospital to the undamaged parts of the imaging building, and to the mobile scanning units, which were positioned in an adjacent car park. Consequently, patient scans could


resume by the followingMonday, just three days after the fire. The trailer-mounted scanning facilities continued in use until the new imaging suite was completed.


Attention to detail When I visited the new CT/MRI suite for the official opening, the care and attention to detail that had gone into its design was clear. Alongside the newMRI and CT scanners (see panel, page 74) among the most notable ‘technological’ features are a central control roomequipped with CCTV – fromwhich staff can observe and control the equipment in both the CT andMRI scanning rooms – and the ferromagnetic metal detection (FMD) equipment from Metrasens – which is designed to prevent an inadvertent projectile accident, and to


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