RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that 223 pa­tients who sought treat­ment at the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre could be ex­posed to po­ten­tial late ef­fects of ir­ra­di­a­tion af­ter the wrong cal­i­bra­tion was ad­min­is­tered.An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the clin­i­cal and cal­i­bra­tion pro­ce­dures of a lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tor, re­lat­ing to a sus­pect­ed ra­di­a­tion dose in­ci­dent at the cen­tre, was con­duct­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO).

The PA­HO clin­i­cal find­ings, in a re­port sub­mit­ted in Sep­tem­ber last year, showed the cen­tre's ra­di­a­tion on­col­o­gist ac­knowl­edged the cen­tre was aware of the pos­si­ble cal­i­bra­tion dis­crep­an­cy pri­or to a vis­it by PA­HO's of­fi­cials.It added no record of any ac­tion was tak­en by the cen­tre to no­ti­fy any pa­tient of the pos­si­ble mis-ad­min­is­tra­tion.Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, at a press con­fer­ence at his min­istry's Park Street of­fices, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, said in June 2010 a cer­ti­fied med­ical physi­cist com­plained of a pos­si­ble mis­cal­i­bra­tion of a lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tor at the cen­tre.Khan said on re­ceipt of that com­plaint the min­istry en­gaged PA­HO's as­sis­tance.

He said: "In Sep­tem­ber 2010, the PA­HO ra­di­a­tion pro­tec­tion and safe­ty team in­ves­ti­gat­ed a mis­cal­i­bra­tion and con­clud­ed that there was a mis­cal­i­bra­tion of a lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tor over a pe­ri­od of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 months, rang­ing from ap­prox­i­mate­ly four per cent to 20 per cent of over-ra­di­a­tion."Khan said sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions were made to the min­istry which in­clud­ed for­mal­ly writ­ing the cen­tre's man­age­ment to fol­low up on "223 pos­si­bly ex­posed pa­tients" and to en­act leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the op­er­a­tions of ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py fa­cil­i­ties.The cen­tre is a mem­ber of the Med­Corp Group whose chair­man is Dr Kong­sheik Achong Low.He is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try and ef­forts to con­tact him on his mo­bile phone proved fu­tile.

The re­port was sub­mit­ted by Car­los A Perez, MD, and Jose Fran­cis­co Aguirre and re­vised by PA­HO's re­gion­al ad­vis­er in ra­di­o­log­i­cal health Pablo Jimenez.The re­port stat­ed Perez re­viewed the records of pa­tients treat­ed be­tween De­cem­ber 2008 to June 2010.It said pa­tients treat­ed for head and neck, breast and prostate were se­lect­ed for re­view of med­ical records be­cause they had high­er pre­scribed dos­es and were at a pos­si­bly greater risk.Pop­u­lar bar own­er Ri­car­do "Smokey" Mc Ken­zie, whowas seek­ing treat­ment at the cen­tre, died last year fol­low­ing nu­mer­ous tests per­formed lo­cal­ly and abroad.His wife, Lisa, had called on the au­thor­i­ties to make the PA­HO re­port pub­lic.

Khan urged pa­tients treat­ed with­in the pe­ri­od to con­tact the cen­tre.He said: "We hope the 223 pa­tients, if they have not yet been con­tact­ed by the Brain Lara Can­cer Cen­tre in that pe­ri­od, should do so and get what­ev­er checks need­ed to de­ter­mine whether or not there was any over-ex­po­sure or any mal-af­fects from that ra­di­a­tion."Chief med­ical of­fi­cer Dr An­ton Cum­ber­batch said the cen­tre was in­struct­ed to con­tact pa­tients and that the min­istry was mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.He said: "When you get ex­posed to ra­di­a­tion, the ques­tion of mon­i­tor­ing pa­tients ex­tends from a pe­ri­od of three to five years, so it is pos­si­ble that for the im­me­di­ate first year or six months, there may not be any symp­toms at all."One mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­fore the court.