Aa
surgical exposure
can you get hep c from having surgeries
I appreciate your response. My sister wants me to email Dr. Oz and ask him to do a show or segment(Im not real fond on oprah) about hep c and what is going on in the medical community about it. I am dumbfounded that so many people are walking around with this and dont even know it. I put down on my medical history that I did some things that could have put me at risk 25 years ago and no one ever mentioned the opportunity to be tested. Knowing I had this could have saved a lot more than a damaged liver. It just makes me sic that people dont know about it. Everyone knows about erectile dysfunction though, dont they....
you can only get Hep C by a direct transfer of tainted blood products making it directly into your blood stream via a transfusion of blood or blood products, or unsterile operating procedures, or a transfer from an improperly sterilized dialysis machine or the like.
Since most countries screen their blood products for hep and hiv your chances are 1 in 600,000 of getting infected by blood products.
When it comes to surgeries and dental procedures and so forth it all depends on the fastidious practice of sterilization techniques. Certainly there are still places in the developing world where the chances of this are still alarmingly high, however it can happen any where if any individual is lax or lazy in their practice. You may recall in 2008 several people were infected by one doctor in Las Vegas who used the same needle on several patients.
This way of contracting the disease through procedural neglect is still a big problem in the impoverished parts of the world where sometimes one syringe is used for example to innoculate a whole school with a vaccine. Most doctors know better, even in remote regions they know, but still if you only have a meanger supply, and have to use limited fuel resources to boil things by hand, then the rates of infection do skyrocket. In countries with these conditions the rates of hep c and hiv have risen to as high as 75-80% of the populace, mainly due to reuse of syringes not surgeries.
However assuming you live in a developed country your risk is very low although you can never reduced the risk to absolute zero unless you remove the human element altogether. I did however work in a hospital in the states, and your risk here is extremely low due to the detailed procedures to reduce blood transfers from patient to patient.
Now that hospitals know these viruses exist and how they are spread sterization has become a high art form unto itself.
That said, of the 3 million plus cases in the USA alone, it is estimated that at least 3 or 4 times that many people are walking around with the disease who do not know it. Screening is not mandatory, and hep c can remain symptom free for up to 30 years in many instances. This means anyone going into surgery today may be exposing those working on them without knowing it.
This bring up in my mind at least the issue of how many elective surgeries anyone should consider having. Since many procedures in oral and plastic surgery are now done in doctors offices rather than hospitals, one might want to question the safety in rooms where not every wall and item may be hosed and squeegied down. In a hospital surgery the ceilings walls and tables, not just the instruments are subjected to regular chemical cleanings that destroy even the minute hep c virus. Not so in every doctors private practice.
sorry for the long answer, it just so happens I was thinking a lot about all this this week as my son was contemplating an elective (not medically necessary) procedure this week and of course our hyper knowledge of hep c drives many nails into such coffins.
I also just watched "A time for drunken horses" again. It's a movie about Kurdish life along the Iranian border, which drives home the deplorable health care people recieve there, amonh other things.
mb
Since most countries screen their blood products for hep and hiv your chances are 1 in 600,000 of getting infected by blood products.
When it comes to surgeries and dental procedures and so forth it all depends on the fastidious practice of sterilization techniques. Certainly there are still places in the developing world where the chances of this are still alarmingly high, however it can happen any where if any individual is lax or lazy in their practice. You may recall in 2008 several people were infected by one doctor in Las Vegas who used the same needle on several patients.
This way of contracting the disease through procedural neglect is still a big problem in the impoverished parts of the world where sometimes one syringe is used for example to innoculate a whole school with a vaccine. Most doctors know better, even in remote regions they know, but still if you only have a meanger supply, and have to use limited fuel resources to boil things by hand, then the rates of infection do skyrocket. In countries with these conditions the rates of hep c and hiv have risen to as high as 75-80% of the populace, mainly due to reuse of syringes not surgeries.
However assuming you live in a developed country your risk is very low although you can never reduced the risk to absolute zero unless you remove the human element altogether. I did however work in a hospital in the states, and your risk here is extremely low due to the detailed procedures to reduce blood transfers from patient to patient.
Now that hospitals know these viruses exist and how they are spread sterization has become a high art form unto itself.
That said, of the 3 million plus cases in the USA alone, it is estimated that at least 3 or 4 times that many people are walking around with the disease who do not know it. Screening is not mandatory, and hep c can remain symptom free for up to 30 years in many instances. This means anyone going into surgery today may be exposing those working on them without knowing it.
This bring up in my mind at least the issue of how many elective surgeries anyone should consider having. Since many procedures in oral and plastic surgery are now done in doctors offices rather than hospitals, one might want to question the safety in rooms where not every wall and item may be hosed and squeegied down. In a hospital surgery the ceilings walls and tables, not just the instruments are subjected to regular chemical cleanings that destroy even the minute hep c virus. Not so in every doctors private practice.
sorry for the long answer, it just so happens I was thinking a lot about all this this week as my son was contemplating an elective (not medically necessary) procedure this week and of course our hyper knowledge of hep c drives many nails into such coffins.
I also just watched "A time for drunken horses" again. It's a movie about Kurdish life along the Iranian border, which drives home the deplorable health care people recieve there, amonh other things.
mb
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