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Gantry crushes patient
- Thread starter canadianoutlaw
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She was 99 years old, being treated for cancer. She died 6 months after the alleged incident. Unless it fractured her pelvis and she died of a resulting bed sore/DVT, my guess is something else got her. Like, being 100 with cancer.
Still unacceptable practice, but too sensational.
Still unacceptable practice, but too sensational.
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Her age is irrelevant.
Not having safety features installed on your LINAC to stop these things from happening is simply irresponsible.
It could have happened to any patient, for example a 24 year old patient being treated for hodgkin's disease under a mask and not seeing the gantry coming at him/her.
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Will be interesting to hear the details. Did the therapists simply ignore the video feed, or were even basic things like video cameras not installed?
D
deleted4401
The story is extremely vague. Ours move pretty slow. If there was a collision, seems like a broken bone would be unlikely, but who knows? The timing sounds funny, too. I am curious, though.
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According to some other specialists, that's the one modality they feel comfortable recommending
I try to look more at the pt's PS and biological age, rather than the number. I've treated some relatively healthy 90 y/o's (appearing younger than stated-age) for mets and skin CA and they were appreciative in F/U
Ours is really slow too so it is difficult to imagine that it would cause a life threatening injury but I suppose if the tech wasn't watching and just kept pressing the button it could cause injury. Obviously it should still be considered a sentinel event for the department and the lapses that allowed this to occur corrected irregardless of if it contributed to her death.
edit: watching the video gives some more details saying that the pelvis was fractured. One of the machines was down and all patients were being treated on the second linac. It also looks like they did not have the ring around the gantry that detects collisions installed. It is still highly sensationalist reporting.
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The other interesting thing if I heard the video correctly is that she was getting an orbital lymphoma treated and she was in a mask. If I heard and remember that correctly (watched yesterday), then there was definitely major human error. To crush her pelvis with the gantry, they must have had the couch at 90 degrees. I can think of no reason for an orbital lymphoma to need a couch kick with an inferior oblique. If there is a good reason, the therapist should have been watching faithfully for a collision.
tragic story... simply horrible
