Class action lawsuit by patients who received high dosage of radiation during their CT brain perfusion scans

Oct 21 2009

A class action lawsuit (Case #BC4241898) was just filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Cedars Sinai Medical Center, GE Healthcare, Inc., and GE Healthcare Technologies on behalf of patients who received 8-times the approved dosage of radiation during their CT brain perfusion scans to diagnose strokes.

Trevor Rees vs Cedars Sinai Medical Center, GE Healthcare, In., a Delaware Corporation; GE Healthcare Technologies, Inc., a corporation; and DOES 1 through 100, inclusive is suing for medical malpractice, strict product liability, negligence, breach of express warranty, and breach of implied warranty.

This class action lawsuit includes all individuals who received a CT brain perfusion scan at Cedars Sinai Medical Center from February 2008 through August 2009. It also includes anyone who received such a scan that utilized CT image machines manufactured by GE Healthcare, Inc. and GE Healthcare Technologies at any medical facility during the two year period preceding this suit.

The media has reported widely on a 2007 CT scan study by researchers David Brenner and Eric Hall, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, claiming that overuse of CT scans may increase significantly people's chances of cancer.

"The amount of radiation during a single CT scan can range from 1,000 to 10,000 millirems, depending on the machine and the machine's settings," says Los Angeles trial lawyer Bill Newkirk of the Law Offices of William H. Newkirk. "The study says Japanese survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were a mile or two from ground zero received about 3,000 millirems on average."

Newkirk says, "Survivors of Cedars Sinai Medical Center received 8-times a normal dose of radiation, making them more susceptible to potential cancers and other effects of radiation poisoning than those people who survived the atomic bomb."

Trevor Rees, one of the 206 Cedar patients who was overdosed with radiation, claims the doctor who called him merely asked if he'd had any hair loss. Rees, who underwent two CT scans for a stroke in December, learned about the problem from a television news report.

"There was no mention of radiation to me on the phone at all," says Rees. "I never thought anything more about it until I saw the news about five days later."

Rees says, "I certainly don't relish the chance of dying of tumors. I'm supposed to live stress free and this hasn't helped matters."

"This isn't just a Cedars Sinai problem," says Newkirk. "We believe that because of the way the machine is manufactured and explained to medical users, there is a very good chance that this same situation has been or is being played out in radiology departments across the country. We have no idea how many people have been overdosed with radiation."