Public healthNorth Carolina brain surgery patients exposed to deadly disease
Officials at a North Carolina hospital last Tuesday notified eighteen patients that they might have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a degenerative brain disease which is always fatal and which makes those infected exhibit symptoms of dementia before they die. The eighteen patients had brain surgery performed on them since 18 January. A patient operated on that that day was subsequently tested positive for the disease. The hospital said that the surgical instruments used on the patient with CJD were sterilized, but were “not subjected to enhanced sterilization procedures.’
Officials at a North Carolina hospital last Tuesday notified eighteen patients that they might have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a degenerative brain disease which is always fatal and which makes those infected exhibit symptoms of dementia before they die.
CJD is often viewed as the human form of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE). Although CJD and BSE are not related, humans can be infected with a variant of CJD by eating meat from cows infected with BSE.
The Plain Dealer reports that the eighteen patients had brain surgery performed on them at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center since 18 January. A patient operated on that that day was subsequently tested positive for the disease. The hospital, in a statement, said the surgical instruments used on the patient with Creutzfeldt-Jakob were sterilized, but were “not subjected to enhanced sterilization procedures necessary on instruments used in confirmed or suspected cases of CJD,” according to the release.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says that creutzfeldt-Jakob disease affects about 200 people in the United States every year and about one in one million people a year worldwide.
NIH also says that most cases of CJD arise spontaneously or are hereditary, and that the disease is rarely transmitted through contact with infected tissue.
The North Carolina infection case is but the latest case of CJD infection in the past two years.
In August 2013 a New Hampshire hospital warned eight of its patients that they had potentially been exposed to the disease in a similar fashion after a patient in the hospital died of suspected CJD. A September 2013 autopsy confirmed the patient was infected, according to Fox News. Five other patients in Massachusetts were notified of their risk because the equipment had been rented to another facility in that state, Fox News reported.
In 2012, Greenville Health System in South Carolina had a similar case and warned eleven patients of their potential exposure to CJD. The Plain Dealer notes that as a precaution, the health system has since increased the sterilization temperature for all instruments used during its brain surgeries.
