I believe it is standard to do a CT prior to an MRI for this precise reason.
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That’s the only reason I came here, thanks for not making me post it myself!
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Last MRI I had they wanded me like TSA prior to the scan. I have never, as provider or patient, had CT prior to MRI for clearance. Sometimes, esp with brain scans, a CT will be done emergently and the MRI later in a nonemergent fashion, but not to check for metallic foreign bodies. And some times people either don’t know or forget that they have them. Apparently this was why they started using the wand at UVA.
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For everyone who’s REAL curious, I just did an ILL request for the JAMA article. 9mm is buckshot size, so I don’t think a pellet gun in existence fires something like that. I’m going with the magnatiles theory.
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No need to wait for the ILL. Here’s the article (hopefully the AMA won’t reprimand me for sharing). I really think that the BB story is the correct one. As I noted above, the 9mm size is what’s reported on the CT read by the radiologist. The size includes the collar of calcification around the object as well as the object itself. The one photograph of the object itself is intraoperative, so scale is hard to establish; however, I’d wager that it’s well under 9mm, probably less than 5mm.
Erwin_2021_JAMAotolaryngology.pdf (777.5 KB)
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What, even after Doug Ross? He made me want to switch to paediatrics, and I’m not even a doctor.
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Hate to break it to you, but most of us only mostly look like a young George Clooney. And, you know, close ain’t close enough. 
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Maybe the 9mm includes the new tissue that grew around it?
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Thanks, Doc! And I should know better - some metals don’t really show up on CT or X-ray at all. Even steel can be barely a faint shadow. Aluminum is completely transparent. In medical devices, we have to choose special materials when we want to see parts of the device - gold, tungsten, or barium sulfate have to be part of the design or the device will be pretty much invisible.
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So long as the pellet doesn’t shoot under the covers, some poor schmuck has to hunt it down and pull it out. It’s small, it’ll come out. It might leave a small, um, hole in the patient though.
Surprisingly few, given how poor people seem to be at remembering pieces of metal embedded inside themselves.
A friend was scanning a volunteer in an MRI. Standard pre-screen, no problems reported, but when the guy was inside the scanner the images were severely messed up. She knew it was metal somewhere. He was taken out VERY slowly and VERY carefully. He was asked again about foreign objects in his head, and swore he didn’t have any. The guy happened to be completely bald. He had a small scar on the back of his head. “Oh yeah, I fell on a lightbulb when I was a kid”. Hmm. He honestly had no idea he still had some metal in there. A close call. We were all very relieved he didn’t suffer any ill effects - it could have gone very differently had it been in his face rather than on the back of his head. The distance between “I can’t feel anything” and “I can’t hold it” is surprisingly small on a modern scanner.
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Yeah, but did you wear safety goggles? I have no idea why we thought we would be safer shooting each other with pellets and BB’s while wearing safety goggles. I guess we were determined that above all else, we would NOT lose an eye.
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I wish I could say yes, but…
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Oh, well that explains it. Thanks.
awful
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Please nobody invent a ferret pellet gun
I don’t know how to parse that sentence and I’m not sure I’d sleep better if I could.
Parse it like wind, I suppose 
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