MRI questions?!
Question: If a MRI - MRA (at a large imaging place) showed a serious or life threathing problem would the person most likely be notified right away?
Answers: If a MRI - MRA (at a large imaging place) showed a serious or life threathing problem would the person most likely be notified right away?
When a radiologist receives your images, and something serious is seen, the radiologist will contact your referring doctor immediately. For example, if the radiologist saw a brain aneuyrism, your doctor would have received a phone call rather quickly....within an hour or so. Even if your doctor was out of the office, the radiologist would have spoken to the nurse at the office. On top of that, the imaging center would put a "stat" on your study, and the dictation from the radiologist would be typed up and faxed to your doctor pretty quickly. I cannot imagine a doctor's office being informed of something serious and not taking immediate action on that information.
I think that only physicians can give you results to your tests/scans so if something were urgently wrong (not risking life or limb) wrong (and one of the scan techs noticed it) they would notify one of the physicians at the radiology clinic after you left and he/she would then call your treating physician. However if you needed IMMEDIATE hospitalization (and it posed a threat to life or limb), they would probably notify you while you were still in the clinic before you were released to go home/hospital.
In most cases of an MRI, you have the scan done and the radiologist reads the scan that day or the next. The results are faxed to the physicians office after the radiologist reads them. Sometimes the treating physician will call you with the results and sometimes they wait until your follow-up appointment. If you are worried you have the right to call the physicians office and ask to speak with the MD's nurse about the scan results.
HTH!