After a Year Still No Answers in California’s Radiation Overdose Scandal

Last June, the Food and Drug Administration became aware of a large number of radiation overdoses that had taken place in some of California’s biggest hospitals, including Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai.  The agency soon began an investigation into the extent of the over-radiation.  A year later, California radiation overdose lawyers are still waiting to find answers.  All we have to go with, is a battle royale between manufacturers of the radiation equipment involved in the crisis, and the hospitals where the over-radiation occurred.

Dozens of patients received massive overdoses of radiation, most of these were the result of staff errors in programming the equipment.  Manufacturers like GE, which makes many of the scanners that have been involved in the crisis, blame hospital staff as being responsible for errors that led to the over-radiation.

It’s true that inadequate training of hospital staff has been one of the factors in the over-radiation.  These modern scanners are extremely complex and highly sophisticated machines that are capable of delivering precise amounts of radiation to specific spots in the human body.  Operating these scanners requires high-end training, and not all hospitals have invested in the resources necessary to train their staff to operate these machines.

However, even makers like GE, are not exactly blameless.  The scanners that delivered the overdoses of radiation come with few safeguards to prevent such massive overdoses.  According to the hospitals, many of these overdoses could have been prevented if the machine came with certain safety devices that automatically shut the machine down when a programming or other error increased the risk of an overdose.

Ten months after the Food and Drug Administration began its investigation, we have little knowledge about the extent of the crisis.  At Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai, to this day no one knows who was in charge of programming of the machine on the day the radiation overdose took place.  It’s very important that we get to the bottom of this, and find out exactly how many other hospitals around the country are involved.