Friday, August 20, 2004
As if time on a dialysis machine wasn't bad enough. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Dialysis, community tie West Nile cases
Two Dougherty County men who came down with West Nile virus a year ago might have been infected during treatment at a local dialysis clinic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday.
Then again, the agency said, they might have been infected elsewhere — but it warned that dialysis clinics should take care not to transmit the virus, just in case....
The men, it turned out, were both patients at the same clinic. They had both received dialysis on the same day in late August. In fact, they had both been treated on the same dialysis machine.
There was just one problem. The dialysis clinic, which was examined by investigators from the CDC and the Georgia Division of Public Health, appeared to have done everything perfectly. The investigators could not find a single breach of the infection-control practices that prevent patients from having contact with each other's blood. West Nile, which is primarily passed along by mosquitoes, can be transmitted by blood as well.
|
