National Campaign Launched To Prevent Improper Administration Of Chemo Drug
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Aiming to reduce mistakes that happened with a chemo-therapy drug, a national campaign was launched Thursday in Philadelphia.
It's a rare but deadly mistake that happens with one cancer drug. Experts have come up with a simple solution and now they're pushing to get more hospitals to adopt the lifesaving plan
Christopher Wibeto was an energetic fun loving guy who at 21 was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A chemotherapy drug designed to save lives ended up killing him when it was improperly administered. Christopher's dad Robin says, "Losing a child is the worst thing that could happen to a parent, it tore our hearts out."
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Christopher's parents who live in California were in Philadelphia for the launch of a campaign to prevent the mistake that killed him. It's called Just Bag It. "To encourage health care providers to adopt a policy designed to prevent a deadly medical error," says Dr. Robert Carlson the CEO of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network which is spearheading the campaign.
Just Bag It is directed at how the chemo drug vincristine is administered: from an IV bag is safer than in a syringe, when it can be injected in the wrong place. That's what happened to Christopher. His mom Debra says, "I was surprised. I was living in a bubble. I had no idea how often these medical errors happened."
Christopher died days after getting chemo from a syringe that went into his spinal column instead of a vein. "It's an error that when it happens is devastating but thankfully it's not all that frequent and so most hospitals don't see the error," says Dr. Carlson.
He tried to save Christopher in California and is now at Fox Chase and the head of the cancer network. He says all hospitals need to adopt the Just Bag It protocol when using vincristine to prevent mistakes like what happened with Christopher. His dad says, "If we can do something by telling his story and help promote this bag it campaign so that particular error can not happen we want to get behind it, it makes us feel good that we have a chance to be involved."
It's estimated only 50 percent of hospitals have the just bag it policy. There have been more than one hundred fatal cases like what happened with Christopher, where the drug was improperly used.