Two more patients who underwent surgery on a VA Hospital recently may have also been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and fatal brain disease, previously reported to have infected 13 patients in Mass. and N.H.
The possibility of affecting more patients was linked to the reuse of the same surgical equipments on several patients. Those equipments were firstly used on a patient in New Hampshire, who has died. The said patient is now alleged to have had a sporadic CJD, a disease which seems similar to “mad cow” disease but not really connected to eating beef. However, this belief has not been verified yet as investigations is still ongoing.
Some operating rooms do not keep such specialty equipments, so these specialty equipments can be rented and utilized in different hospitals in different places.
Health officials claimed that the disease-causing prion cannot be eradicated in the usual hospital sterilization.
William Gerrish, a spokesperson of the Connecticut Department of Public Health, emailed Reuters, "On 8-29, 2013, the New Hampshire Department of Health notified the Connecticut Department of Public Health that two patients treated at the VA Hospital in West Haven may have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."
He added, "The risk of transmission of CJD to the two patients at the VA is considered very low. The general public and any other patients at the VA Hospital and their employees are not at any risk."
Kris Neilsen, spokesperson for the New Hampshire Health Department, stated on Friday that a fourth state may be investigating probable exposure to the said disease, too. However, she didn’t give out the name of the state.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to Reuters that it was communicating with the N.H State health department and the hospitals involved in order to evaluate the situation.
A Medtronic, Inc.’s spokesperson confirmed that their equipments were used in some of the cases but not in all of the cases.
As of the moment, CJD can neither be screened nor treatment. It will just display symptoms like personality or mood changes, memory lapses, sudden jerky movements and blindness. The infected patient usually dies in few months.
