In the News – More Radiation Overdoses from CT Scans

Snippet from the article:

A second hospital in Los Angeles County has discovered that patients were receiving overdoses of radiation from CT scans used to diagnose strokes.

Ten patients at Glendale Adventist Medical Center this year accidentally got three to four times the normal radiation dose, hospital officials said Friday.

In August, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that after being reprogrammed, a General Electric scanner began delivering eight times the normal dose to patients receiving the same procedure, known as a CT brain perfusion scan.

Read the full article at the LA Times

While it is certainly an uncommon occurrence to get a radiation overdose from a CT scan, about 40% of the 260 Cedars-Sinai patients experienced some degree of hair loss from it. No word yet on how many people experienced problems from the second hospital’s mistake.