WHAT A HEEL: Drug-Stealing Surgery Tech Exposes Thousands Of Patients To Hepatitis
Some 6,000 surgery patients at Denver's Rose Medical Center and Audubon Ambulatory Surgery Center in Colorado Springs may have been exposed to hepatitis C by technician Kristen Diane Parker, 26, who stole syringes filled with the painkiller Fentanyl from operating carts and replaced them with saline-filled syringes she had already used, reports The Associated Press:
The technician has been jailed, thousands of rattled patients have been getting hepatitis C tests, and two medical facilities where she worked have been bombarded with questions about how they let it happen. Ten cases of hepatitis C have been linked to Rose Medical Center, where worked until April. …
Health officials are conducting tests to determine if the 10 hepatitis C cases are definitively linked to Parker. Many people with hepatitis C don't know they are infected because they don't develop symptoms until years later. …
Parker's case could end up being the first in Colorado where a patient got an infection from a health care worker who was tampering with drugs, said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the state health department.
Nationwide, there were four documented cases of nurses and doctors infecting patients with hepatitis C between 1992 and 2003, according to the latest information from Centers for Disease Control. A 1992 case cited in the CDC study involved a surgical technician who was using anesthesia medications.
Patients could have been exposed to Hep C from dirty needles, as well as from the saline solution Parker contaminated as she re-filled the syringes after she had injecting herself with the painkiller.
[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]
Comments