Dear AuntMinnie Member,
What caused personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cuba to begin suffering from a variety of symptoms like dizziness and headaches in late 2016? Were the symptoms due to an attack by a mysterious "sonic weapon," or was there some other phenomenon involved?
No one is sure what happened in the fall of 2016 when staffers at the embassy in Havana reported hearing a high-pitched grating sound. Not long after, some began suffering from a variety of ailments that clinicians have been at a loss to explain. Some have even speculated that the entire episode could be simply an example of mass hysteria.
Well, a new study published this past week gives credence to the idea that there could be some unhealthy force at work in the mystery. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania led a study in which they used MRI to scan the brains of embassy personnel who reported symptoms and compared the scans to those of healthy controls.
MRI revealed that the brains of the embassy personnel were structurally different from the healthy controls in several aspects, with less white-matter volume and less volume in several other brain regions. But no one has been able to prove with certainty what caused the phenomenon.
In other unusual MRI news, researchers from Penn State Health issued a warning regarding patients who might be wearing magnetic eyelashes during MRI scans. Like you, we didn't know this was actually a thing, but apparently a new type of false eyelash uses tiny magnets to stay affixed, and tiny magnets don't mix well with big magnets.
The researchers found that magnetic false eyelashes attached to a phantom not only created artifacts on images but also became detached during MRI scans. This prompted the research group to warn MRI providers to include a question about magnetic eyelashes when they screen patients for metallic objects before their scans.
Get these stories and more news about MRI in our MRI Community.
CT of pregnant women
In another concerning finding, researchers from California found that the use of advanced imaging -- in particular, CT -- has increased in pregnant women.
They found an almost fourfold increase in the utilization rates of CT in pregnant women over the last 20 years. While CT is still used quite rarely, the researchers believe that providers should consider other imaging modalities that don't involve the use of radiation.
Minnies 2019 awards
Finally, if you haven't participated in our Minnies awards, what are you waiting for? We're taking nominations from our members to help us determine who deserves recognition as being the best and brightest in radiology. Get started today!
