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Pa. Doc at Center of VA Cancer Probe Admits Errors
(Source: AP)
Associated Press/AP Online
June 30, 2009
The doctor accused of giving the wrong radiation dose to dozens of prostate-cancer patients at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center defended himself yesterday for the first time, saying that many critics fail to understand the complexity of the treatments.
Just because patients didn’t get the prescribed radiation dose doesn’t mean their care was ineffective, University of Pennsylvania doctor Gary D. Kao told a U.S. Senate hearing in Philadelphia.
Kao admitted problems with the program and said he shared some blame, but “I am not willing to be the scapegoat for the complex, systematic problems.”
He also said there was no definition of what constitutes a radiation-dosage mistake and when it should be reported.
But Steven Reynolds of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission disputed Kao’s testimony, saying that the agency had long required reports when the dose is more than 20 percent off from what the doctor prescribed. And errant seed placement — which Kao contended is commonplace — is in fact rare in other programs, Reynolds said.
“Dr. Kao is mistaken,” Reynolds said.
Kao stopped treating patients at both the VA hospital and Penn last year after concerns were raised that 114 patients might have received the wrong doses of tiny radioactive seeds intended to destroy prostate-cancer cells.
The doctor continued his National Institutes of Health-funded research at his Penn laboratory until taking a leave of absence last week.
At yesterday’s hearing of the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Kao was confronted in person by the Rev. Ricardo Flippin, now of Charleston, W. Va., one of his patients injured by the treatment in 2005.
It was the first time the two had talked, Flippin said.
While Kao did not apologize, he publicly told Flippin that he wished he had done better, and the 68-year-old minister then embraced his onetime doctor.
Medical records of Flippin, a teacher and 21-year Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, show that his prostate gland received only 67 percent of the radiation dose that had been prescribed.
“Until I received notification from the VA in Philadelphia [last year] that they were investigating my medical care . . . no one ever told me that there had been any problem with the procedure,” Flippin said in his testimony. “That letter never mentions that other parts of my body apparently got a radiation dose greater than my doctor intended.”
After the treatment, however, Flippin developed rectal pain, bleeding, and digestive problems that became debilitating.
PhillyXTech
4 months ago
388 comments
I'm sorry to have to A: contradict this doctor, and B: live in and work in the same ciy as he does.
As a radiologic technologist, I will say that no holds barred, no questions, dose does matter. Be it limiting dose in diagnostic radiology to a minimum necessary to create diagnostic quality images, or be it the correct dose to be clinicaly effective in a treatment plan such as was being administered to patients at the VA.
Let's just forget for a second the resounding "here we go again," with what it says for the Philadelphia VA Hospital's quality of care.
As we as technologists, and even radiation therapists fall under the supervision of radiologists and attending physicians, this guy is lying through his grimy yellow teeth to say that he is not responsible. It is in fact HIS responsibility to ensure that all people working under his direction are adhering to what is prescribed, and to make certain that he is prescribing the correct amount.
The point is not that treatments may or may not still have been effective. The point is that he screwed up, and that if in just one single solitary case, the treatment wasn't effective because the dose was incorrect, then he has committed gross malpractice.
This guy needs to lose his liscence.