MRI - permanent dental retainer question

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I’m having an MRI today and I’ve just remembered about my permanent retainer wire behind my front teeth which was fitted around 2019. It’s a MRI scan of my head. I can’t contact the dental surgery to find out what the wire is made of as it’s closed today, and even if I could, the wire was fitted by a dentist who left the practice years ago.

Google suggests that most such dental wires are made of stainless steel so should be ok but obviously I can’t be sure.

I also have a gold tooth but I’ve heard that should be fine.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Were you able to have your scans ok? Did the metal cause any shadows?
thanks in advance!

I had one fitted way before then and it’s MRI safe. Just let the radiology team know when they go through your questionnaire.

I have a retainer to the rear of my teeth and have had a few MRIs without any issue. As pp says, make sure you let the team know before your scan and they can check/advise. They may have a metal detector they can use before you go in the scanner too.

Mine was fitted in 1998 and I had a head and neck MRI with no issues.

Hi, I’m a dentist for ppl with complex medical problems and come across this often. Nearly all dental materials for fillings or appliances cause artefact or a visual disruption of the image to some extent. Metal is worse than other filling materials. As long as they can still see what they need to (and they usually can) then there’s no problem. Only very rarely are we asked to plan not to use metal or remove/replace metal crowns/fillings/appliances.
It is safe to wear the fixed retainer for the MRI, but you should discuss this with the radiographers.
If they have a problem with the visual disruption it causes then they’ll ask you to see your dentist to have the retainer removed, but this would be very unlikely / unlucky.

Thank you for all the responses - you were all
right, it was absolutely fine! Now just got to wait 12 weeks for the scan results!