Radiation Overdose

[andrew050703]

BBC just reported a 15 yr old girl died of severe radiation overdoses given by an oncology clinic - no details online except these previous reports:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/4765609.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4721414.stm

and I thought radiation therapy was meant to help! :eek:

Its shocking how such a dangerous carcinogen could be administered so badly, feel really bad for her family.

[MacBoobsPro]

This has happened before. Maybe about a year ago. The girl didnt die but she was even more ill after. :mad:

[Lau]

This has happened before. Maybe about a year ago. The girl didnt die but she was even more ill after. :mad:

I think this is the same girl — she was given the overdose a while back.

It doesn't mention in the article whether the overdose contributed towards her dying. Really sad either way though.

[MacBoobsPro]

I think this is the same girl — she was given the overdose a while back.

It doesn't mention in the article whether the overdose contributed towards her dying. Really sad either way though.

Oh well I must admit I didnt read the article as it probably doesnt make good reading at 10am - or anytime for that matter.

[Abstract]

Well my research involves monitoring the dose delivered to a particular organ during cancer treatment so that if you're delivering a dose that's too high, the procedure can be adjusted during the actual treatment, or stopped altogether, thus minimizing damage to normal tissue. :)

I'm not going to say that this case isn't serious, but I tend to think that radiation treatment is rather safe, and is usually much better than things like chemo treatments for cancer.

[jimN]

Do you know how many cancer patients die as a complication of their chemo as opposed to the cancer itself? Cancer therapies are aggressive treatments that are used because nothing else works, this sort of thing is sadly inevitable.

[Abstract]

Chemo is like a hammer to the body. Sure it weakens the bad cells, but it doesn't avoid the good cells and you end up being weak and prone to a long long list of physical problems and other illnesses.

At least radiotherapy and the like "try" to provide a somewhat localised treatment. Some are very localised, while some treatments simply try to damage a much higher ratio of bad cells than good cells.

Anyway, it's too bad things like this happen. People are so afraid of radiation treatments already, and that's only because of the thought of turning green. :p Now they have to deal with realistic problems, although it is still an infrequent occurrence.

[MongoTheGeek]

All cancer treatments are inherantly dangerous. Doubly so since different cancers and different people react differently to them. She may have had a reasonable radiation dose for another person but it was too high for her. The article didn't say. If on the other hand they used the wrong settings on the machine (For instance from the previous patient. It happens sometimes) really bad things can happen. Additionally some types of chemo react synergistically with radiation.

[mdntcallr]

All cancer treatments are inherantly dangerous. Doubly so since different cancers and different people react differently to them. She may have had a reasonable radiation dose for another person but it was too high for her. The article didn't say. If on the other hand they used the wrong settings on the machine (For instance from the previous patient. It happens sometimes) really bad things can happen. Additionally some types of chemo react synergistically with radiation.

sadly i agree. The goal of the radiation or chemo is to kill the cancer. unfortunatly it has to do this before killing the patient.

cancer. very very aweful stuff.

[CanadaRAM]

Several people died (in a Central American country I can't remember which) when the radiologists used the software of the automated radiation machine to program the dosage. They entered more parameters (using a workaround they had come up with to handle their local requirements) than the software was designed to handle, the software then erroneously generated a recommended dosage that looked real, but was in fact far too high.

The software was not built with sufficient failsafes to prevent it from being "hacked" by the operators. The company who wrote the software said they aren't responsible because the hospital allowed their service contract to expire, and had not paid for or installed the latest sw updates, the operators didn't 'follow the user manual' - and besides, they were immune to prosecution in a foreign land. The government tried the doctors for murder.

[Laser47]

Scary stuff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25