Woman shot in the buttock when MRI machine triggers her concealed gun, FDA reports

A medical equipment manufacturer is investigating after a patient was shot by her own gun triggered by an MRI machine, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

GE Medical Systems was alerted to an injury sustained by a patient while she was using one of its nuclear magnetic resonance imaging machines in June, the FDA report says.

The 57-year-old patient was asked screening questions to see if she had any forbidden, potentially magnetic objects on her person, to which she answered “no”, the report said.

As she went to lie down in the bore, or circular opening of the machine, a shot rang out, the report said.

The patient was carrying a concealed weapon she had not disclosed during the screening questions, according to the FDA.

The magnetism of the machine triggered the gun to fire a single shot, hitting the woman in the right buttock, the report said.

“The patient was examined by a physician at the site who described the entry and exit holes as very small and superficial, only penetrating subcutaneous tissue,” the report said.

The woman was taken to the hospital, per protocol, and later told doctors she was “okay and healing well”, according to the FDA.

This isn’t the first time a gun has been triggered by the magnetic machine.

In February, a Brazilian lawyer and gun advocate was accompanying his mother while she underwent an MRI scan in Sao Paulo, McClatchy News reported.

He was carrying a weapon in his waistband that was then pulled out by the magnetism of the machine and triggered, the bullet hitting him in the stomach, Jam Press reported in The New York Post.

He died from the injury, according to CNN Brazil.

In another case in 2018, a man in India was killed when an oxygen tank he was holding next to an MRI machine was pulled toward the magnet and broke open, flooding his lungs, the Indian Express reported. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service