Known Health Care Workers Who Seroconverted to HIV After Occupational Exposure
Nurses 23
Laboratory workers 19
Physicians 6
Housekeepers/maintenance workers 2
Surgical technicians 2
Dialysis technician 1
Respiratory therapist 1
Health aide 1
Embalmer/morgue technician 1
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta.
Hepatitis C is the biggest risk’
However, with an estimated four million Americans infected with HCV, Fry says more research is needed about the prevalence of the virus among some groups of health care workers.
"Hepatitis C is the biggest [bloodborne exposure] risk for health care providers. But we don’t really know for sure what that prevalence is among surgeons," he says. "It’s probably a study that needs to be done to see whether surgeons who have been in practice for greater than 10 years or nurses who work in the intensive care unit setting have higher hepatitis C seroprevalence rates than would be the case for control groups of physicians who would not be involved in those kinds of environments."
References
1. AIDS/TB Committee of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Management of healthcare workers infected with hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, human immunodeficiency virus, or other bloodborne pathogens. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 1997; 18:349-363.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recommendations for preventing transmission of human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis B virus to patients during exposure-prone invasive procedures. MMWR 1991; 40(RR-8):1-9.
3. Bell DM, Shapiro CN, Ciesielski CA, et al. Preventing bloodborne pathogen transmission from health-care workers to patients: The CDC perspective. Surg Clin North Am 1995; 75:1,189-1,203.
4. Tereskerz PM, Pearson RD, Jagger J. Infected physicians and invasive procedures: National policy and legal reality. Milbank Quarterly 1999; 77:511-529.
5. Gerberding J. Editorial: Provider-to-patient HIV transmission: How to keep it exceedingly rare. Ann Intern Med 1999; 130:64-65.
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