Posted on 10/11/2009 2:44:35 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
More than 200 patients undergoing CT brain scans at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center got doses of radiation eight times higher than normal, prompting the Food and Drug Administration to issue an alert to prevent similar problems, it was reported Saturday.
About 40 percent of the patients lost patches of hair as a result of the overdoses, a hospital spokesman told the Los Angeles Times. The overdoses went undetected for 18 months, raising questions about why it took Cedars-Sinai so long to notice that something was wrong.
"The magnitude of these overdoses and their impact on the affected patients were significant," the FDA alert issued Thursday states. "This situation may reflect more widespread problems with CT quality assurance programs and may not be isolated to this particular facility or this imaging procedure."
State health officials are investigating what happened.
"We're looking into two possibilities," FDA spokeswoman Peper Long told the newspaper. "It could be the device, or it could be the procedures that were followed."
(Excerpt) Read more at dailybreeze.com ...
Yeah you are right there lots of stars were treated there at end of their time including Farrah Facett I THINK SO
I can think of a third possibility, but proving it might involve those embarrassaing IQ tests.
Very surprising since Cedar Sinai is supposedly one of the best hospitals to go to. Question, was this high dose of radiation given to people who had brain scans or any kind of scan. My cousin has had a few CT Scans at Ceder Sinai. I don’t know how it could have gone on for so long without anyone detecting something was wrong
Right. 8 times the dose approved???: I smell something fishy here.
One possibility: missing filter (attenuator) at the head end. And it's a hassle to have to mess with that calibration thingy.
However, Nobel Laureate Obama has a plan. Nobody will be able to get one if he has anything to do with it.
I see about 200 new Ferraris being driven by the teenage daughters of LA lawyers in the not-too-distant future.
IMO, this may be the tip of the iceberg. Cedars must conduct literally thousands of CT Scans each year. Did they have a tech who was using the wrong settings? Was the machine faulty? Were the guidelines for the whole department set up incorrectly?
It will be interesting to see futures reports on this topic.
Mistakes happen at *all* hospitals...even the best ones.I worked for 20+ years at the largest,and most famous,of Harvard's teaching hospitals and there *were* mistakes made.One resulted in the family of one of the victims of our mistakes picketing in front of the hospital for about a week carrying signs saying "This Hospital Killed Our Mother".And the fact of the matter is that they were right.
I’ve been through the radiation therapy routine at another facility. The quality control process was really extensive. I would imagine there’s something similar for imaging applications. This is a significant breakdown. Fortunately, a one-shot dose at eight times the normal CT would still produce a radiation related cancer risk far below the natural risk. It’d be anywhere between five and twenty years worth of normal background radiation, though.
Yeah, good question. For what it’s worth, the radiation level used in head scans is about one fourth of that used in abdominal scans. http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/MedicalImaging/MedicalX-Rays/ucm115329.htm
This line from the story struck me as a little odd.
“The FDA instructed CT operators to pay close attention to the “dose indices displayed on the control panel” both before and after a patient is scanned.”
The ‘before’ part I understand, but what’s the remedy for ‘after’? Writing OOPS! on the chart?
Hmm, the same hospital where the babies got the extreme doses of Heparin( Dennis Quaid twins among the victims). I’ve been to Cedars and had a good experience on several occasions, and our family has experienced mistakes at various facilities. Patients and their families must never take anything or granted, though this radiation problem wouldn’t have likely been caught by asking questions. I always check my meds, for example, but wouldn’t have thought to ask about the radiation levels.
I’ll try to keep up with this and let you know.
Nothing further at this time.
I had a CT scan in 1994 and began losing my hair shortly thereafter. I am now nearly completely bald. I want my just compensation!
Bingo. Good for you for remembering. The “reputation” of a facility should not be cause for patients and family to relax. I worked at UCLA Hospital over two decades and mistakes are made. There is supposedly quality control, checks and balances, but human error trumps them all.
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