A medical error. A woman from Dijon, suffering from cancer, underwent 20 radiotherapy sessions on the wrong breast. As the France 3 Bourgogne Franche-Comté website explains, the patient had to be treated for a tumor in her left breast. Except that the practitioners performed the treatments on the left breast.
At the end of March, the polyclinic where the patient was treated realized this error. Information which was finally the subject of a report in the journal of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN).
The error apparently occurred during the first consultation after which the doctor prescribed a “treatment to be carried out on the right breast” and one “diagnosis to be carried out on the left breast“. As ASN points out, it was indeed the opposite that should have been planned.
If the ARS underlined a “event causing or likely to cause a moderate alteration of an organ or function“, an oncologist-radiotherapist assures France 3 that we “considers that there will be no after-effects“for the patient.”The treatment did not generate any side effects, apart from some skin effects such as redness, but which subsequently resolved.“.
Regarding the treatment of the good breast, the health personnel want to be reassuring, believing that the treatment can still be carried out on time.
A similar case… in Montpellier!
ASN also published an article on April 23 in which it reports a “laterality error during external radiotherapy treatment“at the cancer center of greater Montpellier.”A laterality error (right-left inversion) occurred during treatment preparation, during the selection of the target organ at the delineation stage. Subsequent steps, including various validations during the preparation of the processing and then its execution, did not make it possible to identify this error. Eight treatment sessions out of the twenty-five planned were thus carried out on the wrong side. The error was detected during a weekly follow-up consultation, due to the appearance of side effects on the side opposite to that of the tumorwrites the Nuclear Safety Agency. The patient was informed of the error and its potential consequences. A new treatment plan was proposed to treat the breast that should have been treated.”
