Hospital Glitch Gives Patients 8x Radiation Dosage

[hunter315]

And thats why doctors have malpractice insurance, the hospital will just settle with all of them. A little red flag should have gone up with someone when they realized that they had to override preprogrammed instructions, probably safety protocols, to get it to do what they wanted.

 

[Guest]

Wow, the ignorance in the comments for this story is astounding. Yes a mistake was made, yes there is the potential for serious consequences of this mistake, but in reality the radiation doses received by these individuals will most like not end up causing any permanent damage or meaningfully impact the rest of their lives.

The truth is, the human body can take quite a lot of radiation in a single dose and recover with almost no adverse consequences long term. Most of you dont even realize that the elements you're made out of are radioactive and give you a constant dose. I work around radiation everyday, but so does everyone on the planet!

 

[Mr_Man]

And I thought bricking my mp3 player was the worst a firmware update could do.

 

[superblahman123]

a specialized type of scan used to diagnose *stokes* would provide them with more useful data.

hehe, silly misprint, tricks are for kids!

 

[djcoolmasterx]

Did they make any superheroes?

 

[coldmast]

Rad Regeneration

When under the effects of Advanced Radiation Poisoning (400+ Rads) any crippled limbs will automatically regenerate.

 

[soul555top]

All you people are wrong. This has nothing to do with the doctors, nurses, technicians, or the hospital. Nor does it have to do with our current or future healthcare state. This has to do with radiation. Ban radiation. Also, ban hair, that way you cant lose it.

Hopefully the people who suffered are ok and this is actually a serious problem, compared to "KID SET ON FIRE OVER VIDEO GAME" or "STARCRAFT CAUSES KID TO STAB RANDOM KID". Also, ban Starcraft and fires, and knives.

 

[lordfakie]

Im amaized that this machines don't have a realtime radiation meter of some sort to check the output radiation is consonat with what the program says.

I think is commonsense. Horrible just Horrible

 

[CoryInJapan]

Jesus christ m8..This is why I try to avoid the Doc as much as possible..Keeping good diet and exercise along with some prayer to Jesus has kept me out of it most of my life.

 

[portuguesemafia]

most doctor's have no idea how much radiation a CT scan has. That's what happen's, when they have no idea what they are doing. There lucky there brain isn't fried.

 

[chriskrum]

The machines do have a real time readout. The radiation dosage was on the screen during every scan. The error was in plain sight. This is a case where the technicians put to much faith in the protocol and didn't double check what was right in front of them. The protocol was incorrect because when the factory settings were overridden the technicians didn't understand one of the machine's default settings.

It's bad, but it could have been much worse. Luckily it was restricted to one type of patient and they are generally of an older age group. The patients will most likely die of old age before they manifest long term radiation damage.

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]lordfakie[/nom]Im amaized that this machines don't have a realtime radiation meter of some sort to check the output radiation is consonat with what the program says.I think is commonsense. Horrible just Horrible[/citation]

why should they, you shouldn't be overriding settings. Common sense. Just like the Soviet engineers shouldn't have turned off the coolant to a certain nuclear reactor then stress it.

 

[the_krasno]

[citation][nom]the_one111[/nom]Epic huge law suit anyone?[/citation]

Yeah. I can imagine what I would do in that situation...

"WHERE ARE MY SUPERPOWERS!?"

 

[chriskrum]

[citation][nom]the_krasno[/nom]Yeah. I can imagine what I would do in that situation..."WHERE ARE MY SUPERPOWERS!?"[/citation]
The machines do have real time readouts. The technicians ignored them.

 

[megamanx00]

They should hope none of their patients hulks out and comes back ^_^

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]CoryInJapan[/nom]Jesus christ m8..This is why I try to avoid the Doc as much as possible..Keeping good diet and exercise along with some prayer to Jesus has kept me out of it most of my life.[/citation]

Lol, you need a pay a visit to the pysch ward in your local hospital.

 

[bachok83]

Someone forgot the golden rule.. RTFM

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]kami3k[/nom]why should they, you shouldn't be overriding settings. Common sense. Just like the Soviet engineers shouldn't have turned off the coolant to a certain nuclear reactor then stress it.[/citation]

CT scanners commonly have pre-defined routines for performing certain scans. You would tell the CT scanner control program to do a brain perfusion scan and then the CT scanner basically does one according to its pre-defined values. You can adjust some values, but not a whole lot.

These guys were trying to see if tweaking the parameters of the scan could make it more sensitive or specific in identifying strokes, which is a good goal and something that is done relatively frequently in trials like this. The problem here is that they messed up the protocol.

 

[croc]

[citation][nom]portuguesemafia[/nom]most doctor's have no idea how much radiation a CT scan has. That's what happen's, when they have no idea what they are doing. There lucky there brain isn't fried.[/citation]

There are two homonyms for 'there'. They're and their. You've managed to get it wrong twice in one sentence.

 

[Guest]

Sounds very similar to the Therac-25 problems from 1985-1987...

Every com-sci major learns about that in an ethics course.