International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | April 2019 | Vol 7 | Issue 4 Page 1166 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Zaidi SAR et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2019 Apr;7(4):1166-1170 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Original Research Article Strategies to cope claustrophobia during magnetic resonance imaging examination Syed Amir Raza Zaidi 1 , Kamran Masood 1 , Usman Khanzada 1 , Syed Omair Adil 2 *, Munawar Hussain 1 INTRODUCTION Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is gaining popularity as an important diagnostic tool and is considered the top medical inventions of the last 25 years. 1 MRI is used for creating images of different body organs and structures. For this scan, the patient is placed in the center of a large magnet for a considerable period of time in order to optimize the quality of scan. 2 Although, MRI is a relatively safe procedure, the patients may go through significant anxiety or claustrophobia from having to lie down in a confined space for prolong periods of time. 3 It has been observed that due to MRI claustrophobia approximately 2 million scans cannot be performed worldwide every year. This causes significant economic burden. 4 Many associated factors may contribute to MRI associated claustrophobia. For instance, during the procedure, MRI machine produces radiofrequency pulses, which make large sounds within the machine. Moreover, patients have 1 Department of Radiology, 2 Department of Research, Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan Received: 20 January 2019 Accepted: 01 March 2019 *Correspondence: Mr. Syed Omair Adil, E-mail: Omair.adil@duhs.edu.pk Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Claustrophobia associated with MRI scan is a well-recognized problem all over the world. The unpleasant psychological experience during MRI can lead to premature cancellation of the study resulting in non-interpretable data. In addition, performing future studies on the claustrophobic patient may not be possible leading to non-utilization of an important diagnostic modality. This study was conducted with the aim to determine a cheap and short intervention which can be applicable to small radiology set up as well. Methods: A prospective study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital from October 2016 to December 2016. Accompanying someone was the first strategy used to coped MR imaging claustrophobia followed by placebo (multivitamin), listening Quran and closed eye (blindfold). All those patients who failed to respond in these strategies were finally labeled as an unsuccessful candidate. Listening of Quran was selected as one of the tools as all the patients were Muslims in present study. Results: Among 84 claustrophobic patients, a closed eye was the most successful strategy found effective in (13) 81.2%, followed by placebo 66.7% patients, listening Quran (7) 30.4%, accompanying someone (15) 17.85% while 4% patients remained claustrophobic after application of all strategies. Significant association of accompanying someone and placebo was observed with education (p-value 0.037) and age of the patients (0.016) respectively. Conclusions: In general, placebo, being accompanied by someone and blindfold were found to be the most effective strategies to cope with MRI related claustrophobia. However, the success of these strategies is also dependent on certain factors like age, education status and socioeconomic status of the patients. Keywords: Blindfold, Claustrophobia, MRI scan, Test taking strategies, Short intervention, Success DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20191319