Patients often unaware of radiation risks

NEW YORK, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Americans are receiving more medical radiation than ever before, experts say, but while it saves countless lives, serious, even fatal mistakes can happen.

With radiation therapy being delivered by technologically complex machines, risks from software flaws, faulty programming, inadequate safety procedures or poor training can lead to crippling mistakes, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The average lifetime radiation dose is seven times what it was in 1980, but patients often are unaware of risks, the Times said in an analysis based on a review of public and private records and interviews with physicians, researchers, government regulators and others.

Hospitals often place too much trust in the new computer systems and software, said Dr. Howard I. Amols, chief of clinical physics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York

Since there is no single agency overseeing medical radiation, regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. Accidents are under-reported, records show, and some states do not require they be reported at all.

In June, the Times found, a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer -- then did not report it.

"My suspicion is that maybe half of the accidents we don't know about," said Dr. Fred A. Mettler Jr., who has investigated radiation accidents around the world.