Eighteen patients in North Carolina may have been exposed to a fatal brain disorder similar to ‘mad cow’ disease after undergoing surgery with instruments that had not been properly sterilised.

Surgeons at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem operated on the patients on January 18 using tools that had been used on a man suspected of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the hospital said in a press statement.

The surgical instruments were sterilised using standard hospital procedures, but were not subjected to the enhanced sterilisation procedures necessary on instruments used in confirmed or suspected cases of CJD, the hospital added.

Jeff Lindsay, president of the medical center, said at a news conference, said: ‘On behalf of the entire team at Novant Health, I apologise to the patients and their families for having caused this anxiety.’

CJD causes failing memory, blindness, involuntary movement and coma, and kills 90 per cent of patients within one year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

The possibility of contracting the disease through surgical exposure is very remote, the hospital said.

Julie Henry, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said the department is aware of the possible exposure of the 18 patients and is closely monitoring the situation.

CJD is similar to mad cow disease, but is not linked to beef consumption.
The incubation period – before initial symptoms surface – can last years, the statement said.

After the first sign of symptoms, most patients die within four months, it said.

There are no treatments for the disease, which affects about 300 Americans each year, it said.

Every year, one in a million people around the world is diagnosed with the disease, which can be contracted through organ transplants or operations, said Florence Kranitz, president of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation.

‘This is not something where there is a possibility they could operate and get rid of it,’ Kranitz said.

‘It is a 100 per cent fatal brain disease robbing its victims of their humanity pretty fast,’ she said.

Last year, health officials said at least 15 patients in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire may have been exposed to the disease in a case similarly tied to unsanitary surgical instruments.

Written by Simon Tomlinson and published by The Daily Mail, February 11, 2014.

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