Radiology images from 2019 accidentally deleted 

At University Hospitals Dorset, our older radiology images, are regularly archived into long term storage. Unfortunately, in a very rare event, a number of images from a brief period in 2019 were accidently deleted by the system during this routine archiving process between April and July this year. The total was 5,000 studies, some of them are test images/duplicates. This is very unlikely to result in any clinical issues as subsequent imaging and the presence of the formal reports allows clinical decisions to be made in the absence of the images themselves

Measures have since been put in place to ensure this does not happen again. We have a record of appointments and the outcomes of the reports from the deleted images from this time. Personal information from our patients remains secure and images from prior to and after this period in 2019 are not affected.

 University Hospitals Dorset has a culture of openness and honesty and we will be contacting patients identified as being affected by their images being deleted to update them and to reassure them that adverse implications for them are very low. There is no need for patients to contact us.