Risk of Hepatitis C Transmission From Infected Medical Staff to Patients

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Abstract
DURING RECENT years, health care authorities as well as patients are increasingly concerned about possible professional-to-patient transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV), eg, through exposure to the blood of an infected health care worker after an inadvertent injury. Such general anxiety is well reflected in our daily counseling practice and, in our opinion, this emerging issue should be more extensively discussed in the medical community. Until now, only a few reports were published about physician-to-patient transmission of HCV infection by surgeons performing cardiothoracic and gynecological procedures.1-4 These 3 reports have been complemented by the amazing announcement of Spanish authorities that an HCV-positive anesthesiologist has intentionally infected almost 200 of his patients with HCV.5 In general, owing to the mostly unspecific course of the infection,6 one cannot exclude, however, that HCV physician-to-patient transmission occurred more often than what has yet been reported, but has remained undetected.