2,723 More Scans Get Rechecked In BC

The radiology mess in British Columbia has gotten messier since we reported two weeks ago that 3,400 CT and ultrasound scans were being rechecked because two radiologists “lacked either the appropriate credentials or experience” to analyze them.

Now, another 2,723 CT scans are being reexamined after a hospital staff radiologist made seven errors reading CT scans in one weekend. Two patients who say the radiologist in question missed their breast cancer want the review expanded.

According to the Times Colonist newspaper of Victoria, British Columbia, the hospital president says the hospital has no evidence of a widespread pattern of mistakes. He said the planned review “doesn’t seem that it needed to be that extensive,” adding:

It’s more to reassure the public.

Somehow, he’s not coming off as very reassuring. Not helping his credibility is the fact that the hospital, St. Joseph’s General Hospital in Comox, was denied accreditation in October over unrelated issues.

The scans in question cover 2,490 patients examined during the period from August 2009 through January 2011. The radiologist, Jose Zanbilowicz, MC, CM, has worked at St. Joseph’s for more than 30 years. The hospital has suspended his privileges, but at least two former colleagues have publicly defended him; you can get their perspectives here and here.

In not necessarily related news:

• The Canadian Association of Radiologists wants to add more accreditation programs and additional peer review. CBC News quoted the president, Edward Lyons, MD, as saying:

We have been looking at what the challenges are to ramp up from two modalities that we now accredit—bone mineral density, or BMD, and mammography—to now encompass X-ray fluoroscopy, CT, MR, and even ultrasound.

• A man from Richmond, British Columbia, says he suffered injuries to the skin and underlying tissues as well as organ damage and radiation sickness as a result of radiation overexposure during a CT scan at Abbotsford Regional Hospital in Abbotsford, British Columbia. According to the Abbotsford Times, he says the scan appeared to stop halfway through, then resume after a delay of about 25 minutes. He filed a claim on February 11 in British Columbia Supreme Court.

Related seminar: Radiology Review Course