Article ID: 2023-1792
In 2022, a follow-up survey was conducted to the National Survey on Safety Management of MRI Examinations carried out in 2018. This study aimed to compare the two surveys to determine how the “Guidelines for the Safe Operation of Clinical MRI” affect the safe management of MRI examinations in clinical practice, and to identify factors associated with incidents affecting patient health. Automated machine learning was used to identify factors associated with major incidents. Of the 5,816 medical facilities we approached, 2,668 (45.9%) provided full or partial responses, with 2,582 (44.4%) valid responses. Although the number of facilities that participated in the survey and provided valid responses had increased by 567 from the previous survey, the response to safety management varied again in this survey. On the other hand, improvement was seen on most items related to safety management and MRI exam operations. Between October 2020 and September 2021, 242 major incidents occurred at 166 facilities (6%), a 1% increase from 2018. Most of these were related to contrast administration. Minor incidents also increased by 5% (2,068 incidents) at 833 facilities (32%). The largest contributor to the increase in major incidents was the number of examinations per month. Although there was wide variation in the safety standards applied by Japanese facilities performing clinical MRI examinations, facility responses improved for most items related to the safe management and operation of MRI scans.
