2023-11-10 06:05:01
Info France 3 Center Val de Loire: A woman was the victim last spring of a medical error while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. The patient underwent radiotherapy on the left breast instead of the right breast at the CHRU Bretonneau in Tours.
The events took place shortly before the summer of 2023 at the Bretonneau University Hospital in Tours. A woman is treated for breast cancer by the oncology and radiotherapy department. As part of its treatment, external radiotherapy is carried out on the breast to be treated. A technique which consists of using ionizing radiation generated by a particle accelerator to destroy any residual cancer cells following surgery. But the treated breast is not the right one. The patient should have been irradiated to the right breast and not the left breast.
This information was made public on the website of ASN, the Nuclear Safety Authority, on July 21. According to the ASN communication, one of the reasons which might explain this dramatic fact is “that a laterality error (right-left inversion) occurred during the treatment preparation”. The error was therefore made well before the start of the treatment.
The treatment protocol was planned over 28 days with 28 sessions, one per day. “The various subsequent stages, including contouring and the various validations, did not make it possible to identify this error which was only detected at the end of the 25th session. Following this incident or rather this accident , the ASN classified this event as 2 on a graduated scale going from 0 to 7 going in increasing order of severity. The secondary risks are not minimal for this patient in whom the rays delivered to the non-diseased breast might ultimately cause a radiation-induced cancer. And yet, continues the ASN press release, “already confronted with this type of laterality error, the establishment had started reflections on the process to guarantee the accuracy of the digital information and had taken action…”. It would clearly seem that the process needs to be further strengthened.
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#patient #victim #irradiation #bad #breast
