A Canadian man is claiming that he received a radiation overdose thanks to a botched CT scan. The victim has filed a lawsuit in British Columbia against the hospital where the CT scan was performed, as well as General Electric Canada, the maker of the CT scanner.
According to the CT scan radiation overdose lawsuit, the plaintiff underwent a CT scan at Abbotsford Regional Hospital. The machine appeared to stop halfway through the scan and he was left in the scanner for about 25 minutes. The CT scan commenced again and was finished about four minutes later.
As a result, the plaintiff says he suffered injuries to the skin and underlying tissues, organ damage and radiation sickness.
The lawsuit claims that the technician who performed the scan was negligent in that the scan was not performed in accordance with the standards of a reasonably competent technician. General Electric Canada was negligent in that it failed to design and manufacture the CT scanner to provide safety features that would prevent overexposure to radiation, according to the complaint.
The Canadian lawsuit comes months after the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) urged the manufacturers of CT scan machines to implement two recommendations to lessen the likelihood that patients undergoing the procedures could be exposed to radiation overdoses. The FDA’s recommendations were prompted by an investigation of CT scan radiation overdoses at a half dozen hospitals around the country, including Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Glendale Adventist Medical Center in California, and Alabama’s Huntsville Hospital. The agency found that at least 385 patients who received excessive radiation from CT brain perfusion scans, many undergoing the test to confirm the presence of a stroke, had received excess radiation.
According to the FDA alerts, machines involved in the botched CT scans, made by General Electric and Toshiba, had been wrongly calibrated and subjected patients who underwent brain perfusion scans following a stroke to excessive doses of radiation. The CT scan machines had been set at the higher level for 18 months, but went undetected. It wasn’t until patients began complaining of hair loss and skin reddening that the error was found.
