A patient who received a CT scan from the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is suing the hospital and the manufacturer of the device after receiving a radiation overdose. His suit will not only be on his behalf, will be a class action including the 206 other patients that have received radiation overdoses from the machine. The defect has gone undetected for over a year and a half.
The patient, Trevor Rees, and his Orange County personal injury lawyer assert that both the hospital and the maker of the device, General Electric, have been negligent in preforming the scans. The lawsuit is also alleging medical malpractice on the part of the hospital and product liability on the part of GE.
GE says the machine is not defective. Hospital officials claim the mistake occurred when staff reset the machine, but a misunderstanding about a default setting applied by the machine led to patients receiving eight times the normal dose of radiation. 40% of all the patients suffered hair loss as a result.
Rees says he experienced signs of radiation overdose shortly after the exposure, including losing hair on his head and eyebrows, and redness and flakiness of skin on his face and scalp. A while after the scan, hospital officials contacted him, asking him if he experienced any side effects, but they would not tell him why. The hospital did not inform him of the overdose until much later.
To read more about this case, see the article in the Silicone Valley Mercury News. Image Via Timsamoff [Flickr]
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