Hospital Accidentally Exposes Patients to Brain Disease

Eighteen surgical patients of a hospital in North Carolina were accidentally exposed to a deadly brain disease last month, according to a recent press release from the parties responsible.

Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center exposed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) to 18 patients who had neurosurgery at the hospital. According to a statement from the hospital, this occurred when instruments used to operate on a CJD patient were not properly sterilized before being used in 18 other procedures, exposing those other patients to a possible infection of the dangerous disease.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, CJD causes blindness, loss of motor control, failing memory, and coma. The disease kills 90 percent of its victims within one year, and there is currently no known cure.

The Hospital was quick to point out, however, that CJD only infects one person in every one million people world-wide annually, and the risk of surgical transmission is "remote" with the last case of it occurring in 1976, when standardized sterilization practices were more lax and unregulated.

It should also be noted that the instruments had been sterilized with the standard sterilization procedures prior to the 18 other operations. Unfortunately, when the CJD patient had been operated on, surgeons had no knowledge of the patient's condition until after post-operation tests came back with conclusive evidence of the disease. Still, according to the hospital, instruments on patients with even with a remote possibility of CJD are supposed to be cleaned in an enhanced sterilization process, but these guidelines were neglected.

Since this discovery the hospital has put all surgical instruments through an enhanced sterilization process. they are also working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent other cases of exposure from occurring again.

The hospital has admitted fully to fault in the cases of these exposures and has already contacted all eighteen at-risk patients directly.

The official hospital statement can be found at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center website.