Radiation Errors Place Patients at Risk for Serious Injuries
The New York Times is running a series of investigative pieces on the alarming numbers of injures caused by radiation errors, and the web of silence that surrounds these. The NYT report focuses on several cases where patients were injured by massive overdoses of radiation or radiation therapy aimed at the wrong site. These medical errors have increased even as radiation therapy has become more sophisticated.
New equipment like linear accelerators now allow oncologists to target radiation only at the cancerous region, leaving the surrounding healthy cells unaffected. This has dramatically changed the face of radiation therapy, and doctors are now able to treat even those cancer patients for who radiation therapy was not recommended earlier. However, the new equipment has come with a shocking lack of technical safeguards that prevent over radiation and other risks.
Some of these systems have only the most basic safeguards in place to warn technicians and staff that the equipment has not been configured correctly. If technicians miss these warnings - and they have on more than one occasion - then there is nothing to stop the patient from receiving dangerously doses of high radiation that could seriously injure or kill him. While these new machines have altered the quality of treatment that patients receive, they have been misused on more than one occasion by improperly trained staff, and faulty operations and processes. Besides, the machines come with few safety devices that can prevent errors.
The New York Times report focuses on hospitals in New York that have been the scene of an alarming number of radiation errors. Last year however, officials at the renowned Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles admitted that dozens of patients had been exposed to high levels of radiation from a CT scanner that was not configured properly.
Making matters worse for patients who are injured by such radiation errors is the factor that there is little in-depth knowledge of radiation injuries. Doctors are only aware of the wounds, nausea and other basic conditions that result from over radiation, but there is little knowledge of the severe injuries that can result from over radiation or other serious errors.
The Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at Theodoros & Rooth represent victims injured by radiation errors and other kinds of medical errors, in the Lake County area and around the state of Indiana
