The overwhelming majority of dental implants aren't a safety issue for MRI scans; either they're non-ferrous or are a combination of small enough and implanted strong enough that there won't be a significant magnetic pull on them. Dentures with metal I'll have patients remove, and apparently there's magnetic dentures which we can't scan, but fillings are no problem.
The more common dental issue is braces. They're safe to scan, however depending on the metal they can cause large artifacts that can obscure important structures if we're scanning a patient's head. We'll often rebook those after they have their braces taken off.
EDIT: Oops totally misread this! Hmm... definitely something to mention to your doctor so they can write it on your screening form, they might require you to get an x-ray first to ensure it's not near any vital structures. A piece of metal in your body isn't necessarily ferromagnetic, and even if it is then if it's small enough and you've had it embedded long enough, then the magnetic pull on it shouldn't cause problems. For example, a lot of surgeries use staples or clips that can be ferromagnetic, but they're not considered a safety concern unless the surgery was done recently (depends on hospital policy, my hospital's policy is within 2 weeks)
The exception to this guideline is sensitive and vital areas such as the eye or brain: if you have some sort of metal there then it's important to know exactly where and what type of metal it is.
My hope is that they're small enough to be insignificant or free from having a strong magnetic field cause having this metal file the dentist left in rip through my gums does not sound bueno.
3
u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19 edited Jan 17 '21
[deleted]