Rare Skin Disease?
Lilacs in Spring
My mom has a rare skin disease in which her skin is attaching itself to her muscles and leaving lumps and dimples in her body. The doctors here have never seen anything like it. Has anyone here at Y/A encountered this or someone like this? One Doctor even told her that an MRI could have caused this!
Is her disease called systemic fibrosis? Recently, it has been found that patients with kidney failure who undergo an MRI are at risk for Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF) when they have an MRI “with contrast.” Contrast means they are injected intravenously with a chemical that helps improve the MRI image.
I have had this many times. My mother had to have a blood test to assess her kidney function before having an MRI due to concerns about NSF, since she is older and more at risk for having bad kidneys.
NSF is not a curable disease, and so far 400 cases of NSF have been reported worldwide. Over 90% of the patients had MRI with contrast before developing NSF.
In addition to testing for kidney function in older patients, MRI centers now have a questionnaire for patients to fill out which asks about their kidney history. However,only 3% of kidney failure patients who underwent MRI developed NSF, so individual susceptibility is a big factor in this disease.