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RE: hospital contamination incident
Despite Mr. Lipton's, posting the vulnerability is not
limited to hospital situations, but any facility licensed for radioactive
material. But then again, I don't believe this hospitals action reflects as
poorly on medical facilities as he believes. A poor reflection is when a
patient has to come back for a second medical scan two days later because the
initial diagnostic administration was supposed to be Tc-99m sestamibi and was
Tc-99m MDP instead. The patient complains to anyone who will listen
(coworkers, family, friends, etc.) about the foul up in the procedure that means
he needs to get a second day off from work. But at the same time he
won't mention the associated radiation dose, largely because the physician
has correctly pointed out that there is no real health effect as a result from
getting double dosed from this material.
This
gets us back to how the whole thing is viewed by the regulator. The NRC is
genuinely progressing towards the performance based perspective of, 'Whats the
real hazard here?' Forgetting procedures or performing the procedure
poorly should not result in an automatic violation even though it could be
cited. There doesn't have to be a regulatory response for every
mistake. Accidents happen, move on. The genuine question that
needs to be answered is 'what is the safety impact?' 20,000 dpm of
Tc-99m or even I-131 is not going to impact anyone adversely so why get bent out
of shape as a result? On the other hand if a poorly
packaged Mo-99/Tc-99m generator falls off the back of the delivery truck
and gets broken open on the outbound lanes at 4 o'clock on a Friday, there's a
genuine safety impact, and not from the radiation. Make the citation and
send the bill to the responsible licensee for associated response costs.
Lets regulate according to consequence and less on
perception.
The thoughts expressed are mine, mine, all
mine....
I'm with the
government, I'm here to help
Daren Perrero
perrero@idns.state.il.us
In a message dated 12/27/2002 7:57:17 PM Pacific
Standard Time, pottert@erols.com writes:
. It seems that the NRC is focusing on one tree and ignoring
the
forest. The real issue is not whether the nuclear medicine tech
changed
her gloves before handling the package.
In my
mind, the real issue is what were the consequences? How significant was
the contamination? It's difficult to determine if this was even a
reportable event.
Barbara