They discovered something in common: Hepatitis from surgeons

A few years ago, two Long Islanders with hepatitis C met in a support group and discovered that 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 the patient’s surgical team members whether one of them might be infected. After they did, they eventually determined that the surgeon was infected and that he was the inadvertent source of both patients’ infections, and that of at least one other patient.

Surgeons often cut or nick themselves. Surgeons in training get eight needle sticks in their first five years, on average, according to a recent survey in the New England Journal of Medicine. In that way, they can catch some viruses that spread from blood-to-blood contact, like hepatitis and HIV.

Advice to patients: While the risk is remote, if you like, you can ask the surgeon if s/he is infected with any blood-borne infection.

Read another story on the benefit of support groups for heart surgery patients, or read Roni Caryn Rabin’s source story in the July 3 issue of the New York Times.