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Pa. Doc at Center of VA Cancer Probe Admits Errors
(Source: AP)
Associated Press/AP Online
June 30, 2009
A doctor outside the VA health system diagnosed Flippin’s problem as radiation injury to the anal canal. Surgery repaired the damage, but he continues to have problems with bowel control.
Flippin’s lawyer, W. Robb Graham of Cinnaminson, has filed a claim against the VA.
In June 2008, soon after learning that there might be a problem, the VA hospital suspended its brachytherapy program and contacted the affected veterans.
In brachytherapy, physicians permanently implant in a prostate from 80 to 120 tiny metal seeds that emit radiation over a 10-month period.
If improperly placed, the seeds can damage nearby organs while delivering less-than-optimal doses of radiation to the prostate.
The investigations into the brachytherapy program at the Philadelphia VA found that 57 of the patients were underdosed from February 2002 to June 2008.
An additional 35 patients got too much radiation to nearby tissues and organs, including 25 whose rectums received potentially dangerous doses.
Although Kao and the Department of Veterans Affairs have been in the spotlight over the suspended program, the controversy and investigations the case has spawned have implications for Penn as well.
The Philadelphia VA hospital is on the edge of the Penn campus, and the agency contracted with Penn physicians, who performed the brachytherapy procedures on veterans. The facility is also a teaching hospital for Penn medical residents.
Penn “continues to cooperate fully with the Veterans Administration in its ongoing review,” said Susan E. Phillips, senior vice president at the Penn health system, in a statement. “We share the [VA’s] goal of assuring that veterans receive the best possible care and believe that a thorough review is critical to achieving this goal.”
Yesterday, Penn declined to comment further because of the ongoing investigations.
Gerald M. Cross, acting undersecretary for health at the VA, said that the agency’s Philadelphia hospital and Penn had a “unique” relationship.
“In my review of this program, it is almost indistinguishable as to where the university ends and the VA begins,” Cross said.
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.