Medical scandal in France : 145 French hospital patients overexposed to radiation
February 27, 2008
A series of radiation accidents at University Medical Center (CHU) of Toulouse-Rangueil hospital in Toulouse, France were responsible for the over-exposure to x-ray radiation of 145 hospital patients, say two reports released Tuesday by the French Ministry of Health.
The reports directly blame the French hospital as well as the manufacturer of the x-ray equipment concerned. The French patients were being treated with radiation for brain tumors. A third of these patients appear today to suffer serious after-effects from the x-ray overexposures.
The reports indicate that the disastrous cases began with the French manufacturer delivering the machine at the outset with the wrong settings; followed by a succession of oversights at the French hospital that failed to detect the problem over the course of a year. The director of the CHU of the French hospital assumed responsibility, calling the affair a grave failure.
The two reports, following investigations by the French Institute of protection against radiation and nuclear safety (ISRN), the general Inspection of the social Affairs (Igas) and the French Nuclear Authority of Safety (ASN), were given to France’s Ministry for Health in connection with the radiation overexposure of 145 patients between April 2006 and April 2007 at the hospital of Toulouse-Rangueil. The reports place equal blame on the CHU and on Brainlab, manufacturer of the x-ray equipment, for the calibration error which was the origin of the over-exposures. This error would have come in “at the startup of the equipment’s accelerator, and would be undetectable afterwards by the CHU with the methodology they had at their disposal” according to the ISRN. The French reports found that no member of the most advanced radiology teams was consulted in the choice of the apparatus, adopted during a bidding process in 2004 and 2005. They go on to say that the CHU had underestimated both the number of radiology staff needed and their level of competence to adequately monitor and administrate this type of care. The general manager of the CHU of Toulouse, Jean-Jacques Romatet, took responsibility for his organization. “When you’re a hospital with the charge of caring for people, an accident such as this is for us a catastrophe, he admitted. “There are no words terrible enough, for us it is a total failure.”
The two reports also deplore that information was given to the victims incomplete and late. No patient was informed within the 15 days required in France, and a full two months after the accident came to light, only 52% of the patients had been informed or examined. The ISRN did conclude, however, that the incident was not to blame for the 18 deaths so far among the 145 patients, 16 of which were consistent with their original, pessimistic diagnoses of aggressive malignant tumors, and the other 2 due to causes not involving to the central nervous system.
Besides being one of the worst medical disasters in the history of France, the incident is a terrible blow to the reputation of CHU, one of the oldest medical institutions in France, with a presence in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France going back eight centuries.
The lawyer for S.O.S Irradie 31, an advocacy group in France for the patients suffering from the x-ray overexposure, expressed anger towards the CHU and Brainlab, calling the incident a medical scandal. “Since the beginning, the CHU was at fault since there were a series of failures, the most obvious being an error of calibration” the French group’s lawyer declared. “People have been suffering, and all along, the CHU and Brainlab have been hiding the truth from us.”
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