As per a report released by Cedar Sinai hospital, almost all the patients who went under the CT Scan machine have been exposed to radiation, that too eight times the normal amount. The CT scan machine that is throwing such huge quantities of radiation was rest in the month February last year.

The error during the rest of the machine occurred when the technicians at Cedar Sinai tinkered with the machine to reprogram it for new protocols that would have enabled the machine to scan the patients for strokes diagnosis. After the resetting of the machine, all the patients in the last one year, amounting to more than 200, have been exposed to high levels of radiation.

According to Cedar Sinai officials,

“There was a misunderstanding about an embedded default setting applied by the machine. As a result, the use of this protocol resulted in a higher than expected amount of radiation. The machine was used for other types of scans but the reset error affected only the potential stroke patients.”

For the last year and a half, the medical staff at the hospital had been oblivious to the error that had taken place in the machine and it would have gone unnoticed, if it hadn’t been for one of the patients who told the doctors, that he was experiencing loss of hair since his CT scan.

Radiation, which is one of the primary causes of cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses has been drawn in huge quantities by the patients who went through the machine. However, as almost all the patients who received the CT scan are above the age of 70 years, therefore, according to hospital sources, the chances of developing caner are very bleak, as older people are prone to more fatal diseases and they die much early, before the cancer can take its toll.

Via LA Times & Slashdot