3:11
- ABC News
- April 11, 2018
Human error allegedly to blame for clinic's crisis
University Hospitals said it is still investigating.
3:11
Zenty also said in the letter that the remote alarm system on the tank, which meant to keep tabs of any kind of \"temperature swings,\" was mysteriously off.
\"We don't know when the remote alarm was turned off, but it remained off through that weekend, so an alert wasn't sent to our employee as the tank temperature began to rise on Saturday night, when the lab wasn't staffed,\" he wrote.
Zenty admitted there was some potential that someone turned the alert system off, but said in the letter that \"we are still seeking those answers.\"
Still, the letter suggested the tank \"needed preventative maintenance\" because the function that automatically adds liquid nitrogen to the tank to keep the specimens frozen had been experiencing difficulties for several weeks prior to the tank's failure.
As a result, Zenty states in the letter, University Hospitals employees were manually filling the tank because of the issues with the autofill function, but the levels of nitrogen that \"were monitored and appeared to be appropriate on Friday and Saturday\" likely were insufficient.
In its statement, CBS provided an instructional video to show how it says the tank was improperly handled.
In the video, a big thumbs-down icon appears to frown on using the tank to store specimens in liquid nitrogen. Three thumbs-up icons conversely pop up when, according to the company, the tank is used appropriately with a technique called isothermal, which stabilizes temperatures and limits any cross-contamination.
In response, University Hospitals said in a statement that it is still investigating \"the ultimate cause of the failure.... But we still have not gotten to the ultimate cause.\"
\"We intend to continue to work with the tank manufacturer to ensure this does not happen again,\" the statement reads. \"We’ve been careful to not assign blame. But we’ve accepted responsibility. We will not comment any further due to pending litigation.\"
The Cleveland clinic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit, ABC News previously reported.
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