Dirty surgical tools may have exposed 18 North Carolina patients to ‘Mad Cow’-like disease

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/10/dirty-surgical-tools-may-have-exposed-18-north-carolina-patients-to-mad-cow-like-disease/

Dirty surgical tools may have exposed 18 North Carolina patients to ‘Mad Cow’-like disease
By Reuters
Monday, February 10, 2014 21:35 EST

By Colleen Jenkins and Marina Lopes

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C./NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eighteen neurological patients in North Carolina may have been exposed to an incurable and fatal disorder similar to “mad cow” disease while undergoing surgery at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center because surgical instruments were insufficiently sterilized, the hospital said on Monday.

Surgeons operated on the 18 patients on January 18 using tools that had not been sufficiently sanitized after they were used on a man suspected of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the hospital in Winston-Salem said in a press statement.

“On behalf of the entire team at Novant Health, I apologize to the patients and their families for having caused this anxiety,” Jeff Lindsay, president of the medical center, said at a news conference.

CJD causes failing memory, blindness, involuntary movement and coma, and kills 90 percent of patients within one year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The condition is similar to mad cow disease, but is not linked to beef consumption.

[cui bono]

1. He apologizes? There's no excuse for that. None.

Hopefully those patients do not contract this disease. I wonder what the incubation period is. Mad cow can take decades to show up.

[In_The_Wind]

2. WTF are they doing in the hospitals?

Last year, health officials said at least 15 patients in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire may have been exposed to the disease in a case similarly tied to unsanitary surgical instruments.

[gwheezie]

3. This happens more than you know

Which is why tort reform is bullshit. For all the medical mistakes that come to light, there is at least one that doesn't.