Patient-to-Patient Transmission of Hepatitis C Virus during Colonoscopy

Abstract
Invasive diagnostic or therapeutic procedures may be a route for the transmission of the hepatitis C virus (HCV).1-5 In a study of patients in a gastrointestinal-disease unit, endoscopic biopsies were found to be an independent risk factor for HCV infection.6 We report the transmission of HCV during colonoscopy from a person known to have HCV infection to two other patients. The patient-to-patient transmission was ascertained by sequencing the nucleotides in the various HCV isolates.