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Expected Costs of Implementing a Mandatory Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis B Virus Testing and Restriction Program for Healthcare Workers Performing Invasive Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Julie Louise Gerber-ding*
Affiliation:
Departments of Medicine and Infectious Diseases, the University of California, San Francisco, California
*
Medical Service 5H-22, San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110

Extract

Healthcare personnel injured by needles or other sharps contaminated with blood from infected patients are at risk for infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and other bloodborne pathogens.’ When such injuries also result in blood contamination of a patient's wound, mucous membrane, or skin lesion, transmission of infection in the opposite direction, from provider to patient, may occur.

Although HBV transmission from HBeAg- positive providers to patients during invasive procedures where the opportunity for injury and contamination coexists was documented as early as 1974, the hazard was not deemed large enough to warrant widespread changes in infection control practices or mandatory testing. Recent reports suggesting that HIV infection in three patients of a dentist with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were acquired in the dental office have had a much more dramatic impact.

Type
AIDS
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1991

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