Photo/Illutration Officials from Osaka University Hospital and medical supplier Yuyama Co. apologize on Aug. 21 in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, for two overdoses at the hospital. (Tomoyuki Suzuki)

SUITA, Osaka Prefecture--Osaka University Hospital here announced on Aug. 21 that it gave two cancer patients an excess of chemotherapy drugs, an error attributed to a program malfunction in its drug dispensing computer system.

In February, a patient in his 60s was administered 1.2 times his prescribed dose of the chemotherapy drug Gemcitabine, according to the hospital and Yuyama Co., the dispensing system's sales company.

The patient was undergoing treatment for gastrointestinal cancer. The malpractice came to light after the hospital’s pharmacists reported it.

Further investigations revealed a similar incident had occurred in January.

Another male patient with blood cancer had been administered approximately twice the prescribed dose of Fludarabine, another chemotherapy drug, for three consecutive days.

In early March, the man began experiencing neurological symptoms that included difficulty walking and blurred vision. The overdose is believed to be the cause.

The patient passed away in June due to the progression of his blood cancer. Osaka University Hospital maintains there is no causal relationship between his death and neurological symptoms. 

The malfunctioning program was configured to calculate one additional vial of medication under rare conditions. A configuration change in January increased the likelihood of this occurrence.

An investigation of 4,004 patients who have used the dispensing system since 2022 revealed no other overdose cases, according to the hospital.

Yuyama reported it did not discover additional cases after another investigation conducted at 35 facilities supplied with the same system.

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