Donald Trump, who never met a hyperbole he didn’t like, stated that during his recent medical examination at Walter Reed National Medical Center he underwent an MRI test, which result he exalted as “perfect.”
The strange thing is that neither the White House nor the doctor on the case backed up Trump’s claim to having had an MRI. The closest either got to admitting that Trump had undergone a special test was the White House’s statement that the president had undergone “advanced imaging.” (1)
Now, an MRI is not a random examination tool. An MRI scan is specifically directed at a particular problem. In my case, I have had an MRI scan of my left leg, which determined that I was suffering from sciatica, and an MRI of my back, which informed me that all my bones seemed to be in the wrong places. In neither case was the MRI part of a regular physical examination (because that is not what it is designed for). Trump himself has not indicated what part of his body the alleged MRI was examining.
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What we do know about Trump’s health is that he is suffering from “chronic venous insufficiency.”
Chronic venous insufficiency slows down blood flow from your legs back up to your heart. Without treatment, CVI raises the pressure in your leg veins so much that your tiniest blood vessels (capillaries) burst. (2)
How to determine how well the blood flow is working?
A stress test.
The stress test is used to reveal any issues with blood flow caused by a range of conditions such as blockages in arteries (atherosclerotic coronary artery disease), high blood pressure and risk of congestive heart failure. (3)
There are several types of stress tests; the treadmill is perhaps the most prevalent.
However, I wish to focus on another type of stress test, which I underwent last month: (4)
- Pharmacologic stress test: If a patient is unable to exercise on a treadmill due to arthritis or another medical condition, the stress test can be done with the use of certain medications administered through an IV. These medications can mimic the effect of exercise in the body by increasing blood flow. This is followed by either an echocardiogram or a nuclear imaging. (5)
During a Pharmacologic stress test the patient is laid out under a machine that to an untrained eye can look like a PET scan or CT scan apparatus—or, indeed, like an MRI scanner.
Stress Test Machine
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So, to conclude my practicing medicine without a license (except, maybe, poetic), I believe, since there is no confirmation by medical personnel that an MRI was done (or evidence produced of an area of concern that an MRI would have addressed), that Trump, unable to distinguish among different medical devices, misspoke, labeling a Pharmacologic stress test—which would be appropriate for his blood flow issues—for an MRI.
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(1) https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-health-mri-walter-reed-physical-exam-bruise-swelling-rcna240076
(2) https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16872-chronic-venous-insufficiency-cvi
(4) Unhyperbolically, my result was declared “normal.”
(5) See above, the White House statement about “advanced imaging.”
