Paraplegia following a rivet gun injury: the use of magnetic resonance imaging in the management.

We describe the case of a 39-year-old man who was accidentally shot in the back by a rivet gun. This resulted in paraplegia and partial sensory loss. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was helpful in the accurate localization of the foreign body and in the assessment of the spinal cord damage. MRI enabled accurate pre-operative localization of the rivet and provided information on the degree of damage to the spinal cord. The artefact produced on computed tomography plus the limited anatomical detail of the spinal cord in the absence of intrathecal contrast makes this technique unhelpful.