Overexposed Accidents due to Erroneous Input to Treatment Planning System in Japan

Accidental overexposures by radiotherapy have gathered attention recently in Japan. The widely publicized accidents have occurred at the government official benefit society hospital and at the hospital affiliated to a medical school. The accident at the government official benefit society hospital occurred when one of two existing accelerators was renewed. A radiotherapy planning system was also introduced at that time. Then treatment planning for the old and the new linear accelerator was performed using the system. There were variations in wedge factors for the 30 degrees wedge filter between the old and the new linear accelerator. That is, the difference in the structure of the wedge filter (30 degrees) resulted in variations of the wedge factors between both accelerators. In order to keep strength, a lead board was backed to the lead wedge filter for the new linear accelerator, whereas the wedge filter for the old one was made of the iron. The X-ray attenuation of the iron wedge filter is smaller than that of the lead wedge filter. The basic beam data of the old linear accelerator, however, wasn't delivered properly between the user and the maker. Then, the accident took place because the same wedge factor was used for the old and the new linear accelerator. On the other hand, the accident which occurred at the university hospital was brought about by the input mistake in initialization of the computer system when a linear accelerator was introduced. The input mistake was found when the software of the system was updated. If the dose had been measured and confirmed adequately, the accidents could have been prevented in both cases.