Page 2 of 3: MRI in pregnant patients

Dear colleagues,

I am excited to share our new updated policy on MRI for pregnant patients with you all. This is a policy update that Walt Montanera and I worked on updating some time ago, and that more recently, Aditya helped me with as well. Kamil has shown great leadership in bringing this through to completion, and with his and Karima’s help, we have now released it.

As you may know, our hospital and our department have been leaders in the area of MRI safety in pregnancy, publishing a paper with Joel Ray in JAMA in 2016 on this topic, and hosting multiple lectures on MRI safety including pregnancy through our St. Michael’s MRI Symposium over the years, including a visit to our department by Frank Shellock in 2018.

Our old policy, dating to 2012, while allowing MRI in pregnancy, required a signed consent process and still used language implying that there may be risk of MRI in pregnancy and that we were still studying its effects.

Attached is our new policy, which is greatly simplified and updated for modern times. It is effective immediately.

Summary and highlights:

• Written consent is no longer required. Patients will be provided the attached short and simple information sheet to review instead. No patient signature needed.
• Scanning on 1.5T or 3T is permissible – normal energy mode only
• This policy applies to both pregnant patients and those unsure of their pregnancy status
• Staff radiologist approval is no longer required
• Contrast will not be administered, regardless of the protocol

This has been populated into our Departmental Policy shared folder. Please review and share with your trainees as well as with our clinical colleagues from other departments.

Have a great week ahead!

Best,

Anish