FAQs

Please bring along your valid letter of referral, your electronic health card and a towel. In addition, test reports and images of the requested examination area from prior exams (X-ray images, CT or MRI scans, reports from your doctor or hospital) are also helpful as a means of comparison and should be brought along if possible.

Some exams require that you be given a contrast agent, but this is determined by the radiologist. If you need to be given a contrast agent, we ask that you not eat anything in the two hours before the exam. However, you can drink water if you are thirsty and take any necessary medication.

When is a contrast agent administered, and what should I keep in mind?

Some scans require that you be given a contrast agent in order to make certain structures in the body more visible.
If your scan requires that you be given a contrast agent, your attending doctor will provide you with an information sheet detailing how to take the contrast agent and any potential side effects. You will be given the contrast agent only with your consent. Our practice only uses contrast agents that have minimal side effects according to current studies. If you have renal dysfunction or think that you might have an intolerance to contrast agents, we ask that you share this information with us.

If you have claustrophobia, we can give you a sedative prior to the examination. This is taken in the form of a beverage. You will need to arrive at our practice 30 minutes early to take the sedative.
It is important that someone else comes with you to the examination and accompanies you home afterwards. After taking the sedative, you are not allowed to actively participate in street traffic, drive machinery or climb ladders for 24 hours. In other words, you cannot drive a car yourself, either! Please let us know if you would like a sedative when making your appointment.

You will be given a CD-ROM with the images after the examination. We will send the written results to the doctor who referred you within a week. In urgent cases, the results are immediately written up in a report and the doctor who referred you is informed by telephone.

Yes, letters of referral from the previous quarter are still valid in the current quarter.

If the dyes in your tattoo contain metal particles, the motif may heat up, resulting in skin damage and changes in the motif. For this reason, please determine in advance whether an MRI scan would be an option for you. Due to the fact that no legally binding information is available in many cases, you are required to provide written confirmation that you accept the risk. If you have any further questions regarding this, we would be happy to speak with you personally and give you advice. The same is true for metal piercings; they must be removed before MRI scans.

An MRI is a non-invasive exam that does not result in pain or complications in the majority of cases. Certain measures need to be taken ahead of time in some cases to prevent risks during the scan. We therefore ask that you inform us if you

• wear a pacemaker
• have tattoos, permanent makeup or piercings
• have metal implants or other foreign objects on or under your skin
• are severely overweight (obese)
• are pregnant.

If you have an implant (or multiple implants), e.g. an artificial heart valve, joint prosthesis, ossicular replacement, cochlear implant or vascular clips, you will need to present your implant card.

If you do not have an implant card, or if foreign objects made of metal (e.g. shrapnel) are involved, please bring all available information along for us to review, such as doctor’s letters, surgery reports, X-ray and CT images.

We cannot conduct MRI scans for patients with heart pacemakers. In this case, we ask that you contact centres that specialise in such cases, e.g. university medical centres, maximum care hospitals or heart centres.

CT scans are conducted by means of X-rays. For this reason, they may not be carried out during pregnancy, as exposure to radiation could harm the foetus. It is therefore extremely important that you can ensure you are not pregnant prior to the examination and provide us with written confirmation of this.

If you need to take a contrast agent, an evaluation of kidney and thyroid function will be required ahead of time. Please bring along your current lab results (less than three months old, including TSH value and creatinine value with GFR) if possible.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you are unable to attend the appointment you have booked. We can then offer the appointment to someone else. If you cancel by phone, we would be happy to schedule a new appointment at that time. You can also book a new appointment on Doctorlib, our online booking portal.