Preemies exposed to excessive radiation at Brooklyn hospital
Technicians at a Brooklyn, N.Y. hospital exposed premature babies to dangerous levels of radiation, according to a recently published report in the New York Times.
Technologists with the radiology department at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center routinely gave premature infants whole-body X-rays when physicians ordered only a chest X-ray. They also failed to shield the infants’ reproductive organs as required by New York state health codes.
(The photo at the top of this blog entry shows a whole-body X-ray of a baby from a textbook, intended to show how to use X-rays to detect child abuse. This practice is now out of favor with up-to-date doctors due to the radiation risks, but as the article shows, medical practice is sometimes slow to catch up with knowledge.)
The errors were first discovered by the chairman of the SUNY Downstate Department of Radiology, Dr. Salvatore Sclafani. In a letter to colleagues, Sclafani wrote that he was “mortified” after finding the “full, unabashed total irradiation of a neonate” when examining the chart of a premature baby in his care. A pediatric radiologist Sclafani brought in to evaluate the hospital’s procedures found other “alarming” practices: In addition to frequently performing whole body X-rays, known as babygrams, technicians were performing CT scans on infants using the wrong settings, resulting in excessive radiation.
Although new, tighter procedures for radiological imaging of infants were instituted and babygrams were halted altogether, the hospital never reported the errors to N.Y. state officials as required by law. State officials now are investigating the claims in the New York Times article.
With technologists in many states either lightly regulated or unregulated, their own professional group is calling for greater oversight and standards. The American Society of Radiologic Technologists has been lobbying Congress for 12 years to pass a bill that would establish minimum educational and certification requirements for technologists, medical physicists and 10 other occupations in medical imaging and radiation therapy. However, Congress has yet to pass such a bill, leaving regulation up to individuals states. And in many states, radiation therapists (15 states), imaging technologists (11 states) and medical physicists (18 states) remain unregulated.
“It’s amazing to us, knowing the complexity of medical imaging, that there are states that require massage therapists and hairdressers to be licensed, but they have no standards in place for exposing patients to ionizing radiation,” said Christine Lung, the technologist association’s vice president of government relations.
Source: The New York Times
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