HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - NYT article on radiation mistakes/overdoses

AlaskaAngel · 01-26-2010, 10:29 AM

Thanks, Marjorie for sharing that. The best articles on this topic seem to originate in Pennsylvania, which is where Oncolink is based. They seem to be trying to identify problems and come up with good answers for them, as well as providing cautions for patients to consider.

I still think that providing the patient's permanent record with some method of continous "counting" of every actual dose delivered (regardless of the reason for delivering it correctly or incorrectly) is in the patient's best interest, because the description of the monitoring they are discussing is limited to whether the dose given at one instance is correct or not. That means the patient can still end up having too much radiation by virtue of having too many procedures. For example, in my situation I have been seen and treated for breast cancer in Alaska, Seattle, and California with radiation and none of these places routinely are provided with information to help them decide whether or not I might be at a point where more radiation should or shouldn't be done.

For that reason I made a personal list of every single exposure I have had with dates and types of procedures and gave a copy of it to my PCP here in Alaska. They had no information from the Seattle institution about the double CT exposure, or about the episode of radiation sickness. They simply had no current total of radiation received thus far. And there are no "rules" for them to follow other than their own concern for me in trying to decide whether or not to order more radiation to help them figure out what is going on versus a few repeated lab tests, or perhaps using ultrasound even when it might not be quite as useful but would be less damaging.

A.A.

01-26-2010, 10:29 AM	#9
AlaskaAngel Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Alaska Posts: 2,018	Re: Pennsylvania article Thanks, Marjorie for sharing that. The best articles on this topic seem to originate in Pennsylvania, which is where Oncolink is based. They seem to be trying to identify problems and come up with good answers for them, as well as providing cautions for patients to consider. I still think that providing the patient's permanent record with some method of continous "counting" of every actual dose delivered (regardless of the reason for delivering it correctly or incorrectly) is in the patient's best interest, because the description of the monitoring they are discussing is limited to whether the dose given at one instance is correct or not. That means the patient can still end up having too much radiation by virtue of having too many procedures. For example, in my situation I have been seen and treated for breast cancer in Alaska, Seattle, and California with radiation and none of these places routinely are provided with information to help them decide whether or not I might be at a point where more radiation should or shouldn't be done. For that reason I made a personal list of every single exposure I have had with dates and types of procedures and gave a copy of it to my PCP here in Alaska. They had no information from the Seattle institution about the double CT exposure, or about the episode of radiation sickness. They simply had no current total of radiation received thus far. And there are no "rules" for them to follow other than their own concern for me in trying to decide whether or not to order more radiation to help them figure out what is going on versus a few repeated lab tests, or perhaps using ultrasound even when it might not be quite as useful but would be less damaging. A.A.