[General anesthesia for magnetic resonance. Experience on 100 cases]

The diffusion of magnetic resonance imaging as a powerful non-invasive diagnostic procedure has led to an increasing request for general anaesthesia in patients who cannot lie still and/or who cannot guarantee adequate spontaneous breathing during the procedure. We report our own experience in 100 patients of this kind, in whom the need for general anaesthesia was due to neurological problems and/or tender age. Anaesthesia and monitoring devices were either devoted of ferromagnetic properties (allowing their location near the patient; as the ARM-S88 portable ventilator, which we used for adult patients) or connected to the patient with long connectors (allowing their location outside the resonance magnetic field; as the Draeger-Babylog pressometric ventilator, which we used in pediatric patients). On these bases administration of intravenous (86 patients) and inhalation (14 patients) anaesthesia during magnetic resonance proved safe in our experience.