White knight

EU curbs on scans 'putting lives at risk'

22-09-2005



THE health of thousands of British patients, many of them children, will be endangered by needless European regulations that severely restrict the availability of MRI scans, according to senior specialists.

Leading experts on magnetic resonance imaging, including a scientist who won a Nobel prize for pioneering the technology, warned ministers yesterday that overzealous new EU safety rules will have disastrous implications.

An EU directive that will become law in Britain by 2008 will ban medical workers from standing close to MRI scanners on health and safety grounds, even though there is no evidence that this carries any risk.

This will make illegal up to 30 per cent of the estimated million scans conducted in Britain each year, including half of those performed on children, denying patients access to a procedure that transformed diagnosis and treatment of cancer, heart conditions, multiple sclerosis and back pain.

A particularly perverse consequence of the regulations is that many of those who would benefit from MRI scans will instead have X-rays, which are well established to pose a much greater danger to both patients and medical staff.

The threat has inspired a group of 12 MRI specialists to write yesterday to Patricia Hewitt, the Health Sectretary, urging an amendment of the directive to reduce its impact on medical scanning. The letter is signed by Sir Peter Mansfield, of Nottingham University, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his contribution to developing MRI, and Professor Ian Young, of Imperial College London, who performed the world’s first MRI brain scans.

Other signatories include the presidents of the Royal College of Radiologists, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, and the British Institute of Radiology, and four Fellows of the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution. Sir Peter said: “I have been distressed to find that the future development of MRI is being stifled by moves to regulate exposure to the electromagnetic fields associated with MRI, using absolute exposure limits that are based on very uncertain science. I believe that the EU directive and proposed UK legislation will hamper clinical practice unnecessarily, stop future MRI developments in their tracks, and damage UK industry.”

The Physical Agents (Electromagnetic Fields) Directive, which sets absolute limits for workplace exposure to electromagnetic fields, was adopted by the EU last year and must be incorporated INTO phpbb_member states’ national law by 2008.

Although it was designed chiefly to protect workers in industries such as electricity generation and telecommunications there are no exemptions for the health sector. MRI scanners do generate powerful electromagnetic fields, but there is no evidence that these have triggered adverse health effects.

Stephen Keevil, head of magnetic resonance physics at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, in Central London, said: “Despite the huge number of patients exposed to MRI, there is no evidence whatsoever of the adverse health effects. It is shocking that serious consequences may result from such shaky evidence.”

The new laws will particularly affect scanning of children, and anxious or infirm adults, who are usually sedated to keep them still. Parents will also be prevented from comforting their children.

Research will suffer because there will be a ban on the most powerful MRI machines that measure how brain activity is affected by particular stimuli or tasks. The scientists have asked Ms Hewitt to press the EU to review the directive, and to delay drafting UK legislation for at least two years pending further research.

A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive, which is responsible for the directive in Britain, said: “The HSE has already begun a dialogue with many sectors, including the medical industry, to look at how the directive may be implemented.”

MAPPING MRI

• MRI works by exposing the body to a magnetic field while radiowaves excite atoms in the body.

• This reveals organs, tissues and tumours.

• Doctors consider it the most important advance in medical diagnosis of recent decades.

• It provides more detailed images than computed tomography or X-rays and holds no risk from radiation.

• Developed in 1970s. Sir Peter Mansfield, of Mansfield, of Nottingham University, and Paul Lauterbur, of Illinois University, shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003.


The Times, 21st September 2005

EU curbs on scans 'putting lives at risk'
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent