How long does it take to get a read on an MRI?

All depends on your doctor.

I understand that, but should I expect to have a diagnosis in a few days or several weeks? I guess I was just wondering what other people's experiences were. Sorry, I'm just a little anxious.

Have a coworker that didn't hear back until 2 weeks after the MRI.

OP wrote:

I understand that, but should I expect to have a diagnosis in a few days or several weeks? I guess I was just wondering what other people's experiences were. Sorry, I'm just a little anxious.

Well, ask your doctor.

Generally, the MRI will get read and interpreted by a radiologist within a few hours of being done. They will send their report to your doctor. So the delay is how long it takes YOUR doctor to fit you in their schedule to discuss the results.

When you get the MRI done, you could ask for a copy on CD and try to interpret it yourself I guess. Good luck with that.

polevaultpower wrote:

Generally, the MRI will get read and interpreted by a radiologist within a few hours of being done. They will send their report to your doctor. So the delay is how long it takes YOUR doctor to fit you in their schedule to discuss the results.

Wow, that is quick turn around. At the hospital I work at, the physicians can expect to get a copy of the MRI a few hours after it is done. They can read it and plan for the next step, but everyone waits for the official read from the radiologist to be done and written up to ensure they didn't miss anything. After this comes in, they let the patient know. It can take a few days for the radiologist to get the official read in, so this is usually the delay at my facility at least.

The other factor to consider is, if you are in the outpatient setting and also doing rehab, the wait will tend to be longer. This is so you can go through the MRI results and see how the rehab is progressing at the same visit.

No hospital takes a few days to read an MRI. This is not true. You either dont know what you are talking about or are lying.

MRI's are usually read within MINUTES not hours of completion. Any hospital that allowed MRI's not to be read for hours would have lawsuits out the wazzzo in no time.

The physician has the results in an hour or two, btu probably doesnt get around to reading the radiologists notes for a day or two or three or four etc. Call the dr.s office and ask the next day and they should have them.

Well when I had my stress fracture I was told in about 15 seconds but then again it was my mother reading the scan... ha know that doesn't help. But seriously the scans are read within an hour or two generally, however when you hear willl depend on who is distributing the info.

I had an MRI back in june on my knee and it two weeks until I got the results read back to me. I have had problems with it since and had an appointment with another doctor who had never seen the results and he looked through the images with me and told me exactly what the doctor told me back in June.

So in all reality you could get the results back that day but most likely they are going to make you wait and have you come back for a follow-up visit and tell you then.

Last year I had a knee injury and knew something was wrong. I went to my doctor and basically told him I wasn't leaving his office untill he arranged an MRI for me. The next morning I had one and knew the results by the afternoon. Be firm but nice and it shouldn't be this long, drawn out ordeal. Good luck.

As it turned out, I had a torn menicus and needed to have it scoped.