Radiation

Scores of radiation overdoses at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have been traced to a single cause: a mistake the hospital made resetting a CT scanner. Hospital officials said Monday that the error occurred in February 2008, when the hospital began using a new protocol for a specialized type of scan used to diagnose strokes. Doctors believed it would provide them more useful data to analyze disruptions in the flow of blood to brain tissue. That meant resetting the machine to override the pre-programmed instructions that came with the scanner when it was installed.

More than 200 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center were inappropriately exposed to high doses of radiation from CT brain scans used to diagnose strokes, hospital officials told The Times on Friday. About 40% of the patients lost patches of hair as a result of the overdoses, a hospital spokesman said. Even so, the overdoses went undetected for 18 months as patients received eight times the dose normally delivered in the procedure, raising questions about why it took Cedars-Sinai so long to notice that something was wrong.

Being older than 70 should not stop patients from getting aggressive treatment of the most malignant form of brain cancer with radiation therapy, French researchers have reported. Because the tumor, glioblastoma, typically kills half its victims within a year, doctors have been unsure whether it is even worthwhile to treat older patients.

Only days after federal inspectors completed a review of troubled Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Los Angeles County public health officials cited the facility for a slew of lapses in radiation safety rules in a report released this week. Lax monitoring and handling of radioactive materials in recent months -- and in some cases, years -- were among 18 violations found by public health surveyors, according to the report from county public health director Dr.

The computer's voice repeatedly droned "Gamma Alert!" until Glen Neilson, a Customs and Border Protection officer, reached up and switched it off. It was his fifth radioactivity alert in five minutes. Neilson was working at Pier A in the Port of Long Beach, which has more such alerts than any cargo terminal in the nation. A truck hauling a rusty yellow container triggered this one. He directed the truck to a secondary inspection station and called up the container's shipping manifest.

Outpatient clinics that perform diagnostic procedures using radioactive materials could do a better job of telling patients that they may set off radiation detectors at security checkpoints, a study shows. Information and documentation that these facilities provide to patients "varies widely" in terms of quality, said Armin Ansari, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was involved in the study. "Some are extremely well done, some are not."

In a country still deeply ravaged by the worst nuclear accident in history, opposition leaders rallied thousands in the streets of this capital on Wednesday, calling for the impeachment of President Alexander G. Lukashenko and accusing his government of failing to protect citizens from lingering radiation 20 years after the Chernobyl power plant disaster.

Fewer but more concentrated doses of radiation therapy could be as safe and effective as a longer course of treatment for breast cancer patients, researchers said Tuesday. Women having radiation therapy, which is given to reduce the risk of the cancer returning after surgery, normally receive 25 doses over five weeks. But a 10-year trial of a shorter course of 13 larger doses showed it worked just as well as the standard treatment and without an increase in side effects.

Radioactive emissions from a 1959 nuclear accident at a research lab near Simi Valley appear to have been much greater than previously suspected and could have resulted in hundreds of cancers in surrounding communities, according to a study released Thursday. Chemical contamination from rocket engine testing at the site continues to threaten soil and groundwater in the area around Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the study also found.

Concerned about the findings in a new environmental study, lawmakers and activists renewed their call Friday for stricter cleanup standards at a former nuclear and rocket engine testing site near Simi Valley. An independent panel of scientists and environmental experts reported this week that emissions from a 1959 nuclear accident at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have caused hundreds of cancers in surrounding communities "over a period of many decades."