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Contaminated Surgery
Contaminated Surgery
Surgery accounts for 50% of transfusions. Surgery before 1992 was Hepatitis C implicated, especially Major Surgery, Heart, C-Section, Amputation etc. Germany has a better record than us on testing for the prevalence of Hepatitis C in different patient cohorts, see below.
Prevalence and Clinical Outcome of Hepatitis C Infection in Children Who Underwent Cardiac Surgery before the advent of hcv screening
Manfred Vogt, M.D., Thomas Lang, M.D., Gert Frösner, M.D., Christiane Klingler, Anna F. Sendl, Ph.D., Anita Zeller, Baldur
Background
There are few data on the prevalence and clinical outcome of hepatitis C infection in children. We studied 458 children who underwent cardiac surgery in Munich, Germany, before 1991, when blood-donor screening for hepatitis C was introduced in Germany.
Results
Sixty-seven
(14.6 percent) of the 458 patients who had undergone cardiac surgery had anti-HCV, as compared with 3 (0.7 percent) of the control subjects (P<0.001). Of the 17 patients who underwent liver biopsies, only 3 had histologic signs of progressive liver damage. These three patients had additional risk factors: two had congestive heart failure, and the third had also been infected with
hepatitis B virus.
Conclusions
Children who had undergone cardiac surgery in Germany before the implementation of blood-donor screening for hepatitis C had a substantial risk of acquiring the infection.
