More Radiation Overdoses Exposed
Radiation overdoses are a serious and dangerous problem facing cancer patients throughout the United States. We recently wrote about a New York Times investigation of fatal radiation overdoses at a Florida hospital. Now, a hospital in Missouri has admitted that it overradiated 76 patients over a five year period. The vast majority of the overradiated patients were suffering from brain cancer.
The hospital, CoxHealth in Springfield, Missouri, blamed the errors on powerful new radiation equipment which had been calibrated incorrectly even with a representative of the manufacturer watching as it was done.
According to the hospital, half of all patients undergoing stereotactic radiation therapy were overdosed by about 50 percent after a physicist at the hospital miscalibrated the new equipment and routine checks over the next five years failed to catch the error.
Stereotactic therapy delivers radiation in such high doses that usually only one treatment is required. It is commonly used to treat small tumors in the head.
The overradiations were discovered in September 2009 after a second physicist received training on the equipment and the hospital began questioning whether the machine had been installed correctly in 2004.
In Missouri, like many states, there is little or no government oversight of radiation therapy. However, The FDA has recently announced plans to increase its oversight of medical radiation. Predictably, this proposal is being opposed by many hospitals and manufacturers of radiation equipment.
Notably, the president of the Missouri hospital where these errors occurred urged the FDA to go even further in regulating radiation therapy. His statement was as follows:
“The initiative should be broadened to include regulation of medical radiation therapy as well. We have also learned that the incident here at CoxHealth is, unfortunately, not an isolated occurrence. Rather, similar instances of medical overradiation have occurred at other hospitals throughout the country. Without increased regulation and oversight, these instances of medical overradiation will likely continue.”
