So this week in Funky Cancercancer, we find out that Lisa was never in remission after all. There was a “mix-up in radiology,” and someone else’s scans were read by mistake.
Could that actually happen? I remember Snopes saying that the UL about the reversed x-ray resulting in the healthy lung being removed by mistake could never happen, but I don’t recall them saying why. But wouldn’t there be failsafes to prevent reading “someone else’s” scans? And would the scans be the only way of determining remission? What about white blood cell counts? It just seems like there would be some way of doublechecking the cancer status itself, beyond doublechecking the scans. Or is there?
the two lungs are not symetrical. Most people (yup, there’s exceptions) have the heart on the left, three lobules on the rigth lung and two lobules on the left lung. Unless the doctor was drunker than a drowned dolphin, if he saw an X-ray that had the heart on the right he’d verify that he’d hung it right and if so verify what side the patient’s heart’s on.
I just got off of a gig writing software for electronic medical records, including things like radiology reports.
There’s a huge amount of code in all hospital applications that deal with merge/moves. In other words, Lab Result Y got on Patient X’s record when it should be on Patient Y’s record.
HUGE amount of code. We put a lot of work into it.
Draw what conclusions you may, but for me, I would insist on double checking everything before doing any major medical procedure.
Matching patient information with a particular scan is taken very seriously in the world of radiology. A lot of effort goes into it from a software and human element side, as Athena attests. Part of the reason is because it is fairly easy to screw up and the consequences are very bad. One careless technician entering data wrong and a mix-up could happen.