What happens if brain MRI needed but person too agitated to keep dtill

[limetrees32]

Just that really.
80 year old relative sudden psychotic episodes and hospital trying to eliminate causes.

Sedation? If it's that important

Yes, sedation or anaesthetic depending on how agitated and how essential it is. Or maybe just try again another day if not urgent.

I had to wear a darth vader type mask to keep my head still when I had a brain MRI. Suspect they would use that and a sedative (they prescribed one for me as was having major anxiety about it).

Thanks.
Yes I guess sedation.
He is sedated anyway, I'm not sure why the hospital are querying if they can do it.

The exact same thing happened with my dad when he also had psychotic episodes out of the blue in his early 60s.
He became very distressed in the machine and they had to stop it early, only getting partial images.
These partial images didn't show anything concerning, so they just kind of shrugged and went, "Oh well", and it wasn't attempted again.

The mask is not to keep you head still ( though it can help) it transmits and receives signal during the scan

sedation requires specialised monitoring in the scanner and can be sanherous if they stop breathing for instance in the scanner .

With young kids they do them under anaesthetic, so presumably they could do the same with an adult.

There's a few problems with scans involving sedation or anaesthesia. The brain works differently when it's sedated, so the scan might not represent an accurate picture of the brain and therefore might not be useful in diagnosis. Also sedation/anaesthesia requires additional support with the scan, especially if they have to be rendered unconscious and therefore need airway support, which makes the scan more complex.

Basically the hospital have to weigh up whether "the juice is worth the squeeze", whether the scan will give them the information required if the patient is not conscious.

Thank you @roundaboutthehillsareshining and @Carriemac I did wonder about the effect on brain.action and value of scan if heavily sedated.
Hadn't considered the breathing issues.

anaesthetist pov... this is a not terribly uncommon scenario, but the decision making can be tricky and needs some really joined up thinking (including how likely the MRI is to make a real difference to a diagnosis or outcome). Sedation is relatively high risk in the scanner because of the issues of airway compromise. GA MRI is sometimes safer but a) comes with some risk (particularly in this demographic) and b) is not an option at every hospital because of the kit that's required to do it safely in the scanner. The action of sedation on the brain won't make any difference to a 'normal' scan which is looking at anatomy...might need caution with interpreting an fMRI though. I would imagine they're taking the time to discuss how essential the scan is, how much risk is it sensible to take to achieve that scan, how urgent it is, and what the anaesthetic options might be in that hospital if it really needs to be done urgently.