When the Surgeon Is Infected, How Safe Is the Surgery?

NY Times ^ | July 3, 2007 | RONI CARYN RABIN

[neverdem]

A few years ago, two Long Islanders with hepatitis C met in a support group and soon discovered they had something in common: both had become infected with the virus after open-heart surgery — by the same surgeon.

Public health investigators, who were looking into one of the two cases, had not asked members of the patient’s surgical team whether one of them might be infected. Now they did. Eventually they determined that the surgeon, Dr. Michael Hall, was infected and that he was the inadvertent source of both patients’ infections — and that of at least one other patient.

Dr. Hall was never found legally liable, and he continues to do hundreds of open-heart operations each year. His lawyer, Tony Sola, said last week that the doctor had tested negative for hepatitis C in recent years, that there were no restrictions on his practice and “that he did absolutely nothing wrong and operated in a perfectly reasonable manner.”

Still, the episode was a window into a risk about which troublingly little is known: the possibility of getting a viral infection from a health care worker.

Viruses like hepatitis B, hepatitis C and H.I.V. are spread by blood-to-blood contact. Doctors, like cooks, often cut or nick themselves, and if it happens while a surgeon’s hands are inside the patient’s body cavity, the doctor is at risk of both picking up and passing on an infection. A survey in The New England Journal of Medicine last week reported that surgeons-in-training suffer an average of eight needle sticks in their first five years.

Despite the risk, however, there is no mandatory testing of surgeons for blood-borne viruses, and infected health care workers are not prohibited from practicing medicine or invasive surgery. Local expert panels are convened to review cases if they come...

[cripplecreek]

Safer than surgery conducted by surgeons infected with islam.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Dr. Hall was never found legally liable, and he continues to do hundreds of open-heart operations each year.

OK, why? Why should a doctor not be found legally liable if he operates on a patient knowing that he has an incurable (even if treatable), communicable disease? And why would the law allow him to continue performing operations in this case?

This needs to become illegal quickly.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

I guess Doctors and nurses should also refuse to operate/treat people with communicable diseases too?

[PeterPrinciple]

said last week that the doctor had tested negative for hepatitis C in recent years,

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If you have hep c is it possible to test negative? did he test positive at one time?

[rageaholic]

surgeons infected with islam.

LOL, thats what I thought the article was about LOL

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I guess Doctors and nurses should also refuse to operate/treat people with communicable diseases too?

Do you really think they're in the same position? The doctor is the one performing the operation in both cases, and his stated purpose as a doctor is to treat the patient, not to cause him further illness. Any doctor who takes his oath seriously should refrain from performing operations if he knows he could infect his patients with a serious disease. And for those who don't worry about such things, the law should take a hand.

[OB1kNOb]

So it’s not currently illegal for doctors and nurses to work on patients if they (the drs/nrs) knowing have Hepatitis C?

[neverdem]

No

[gidget7]

I agree with YOU, Geek, and this should logically extend to chefs/cooks as well. Any profession that poses a risk to the public, from carriers of these diseases should as a matter of conscience, demand that once discovered, that person no longer conducts that particular profession. Period. It is sad when someone loses their livelihood, yes, but it is also one a hundred reasons, if not more, that it happens.

[vetvetdoug]

Sterile technique is for the safety of the surgeon and the patient. There are standard barriers to do the best to prevent transmission of diseases from the surgeon to the patient and vice versa. If they wish to prevent surgeons from continuing to practice because they have a preventable communicable disease, then the reverse should be applicable...patients with communicable diseases should not be tended to because they risk the safety of the surgeon.

Physicians that treat patients with highly infectious diseases, ie..Ebola/Lassa, do so at their life's peril.