Infection threat still real

Saturday, June 20, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

A report released this week to Congress reveals, shockingly, that fewer than half of the 42 Veterans Affairs medical facilities given a surprise inspection last month had proper training and guidelines in place for endoscopic procedures.

This is outrageous news, particularly in light of all the publicity that has been generated in recent years by people who have been exposed to deadly diseases because of unsanitary procedures at endoscopy clinics.

Las Vegas’ own experience, in early 2008, is all too fresh in our minds. More than 40,000 patients who had undergone colonoscopies at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada were advised to get blood tests because they could have been exposed to hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV. More than 100 of those patients likely contracted hepatitis C at the clinic, the Southern Nevada Health District later reported.

Tuesday’s report was prepared by the inspector general’s office of Veterans Affairs and delivered to a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee. According to an Associated Press story, committee members were livid that people, in this case veterans, were still being endangered by endoscopy procedures, which are intended to save lives through early detection of cancer or other medical conditions in the colon, nose, throat and esophagus.

Endoscopy centers in several states over the past several years have had to contact patients to warn them that they might have been exposed to deadly diseases. Unsanitary procedures have included reuse of single-use needles and the reuse, before cleaning, of endoscopes.

After all of the national publicity following the multiple mass notifications of patients, including three six months ago at VA clinics in Tennessee, Florida and Georgia, it would seem automatic that surgical centers would have training regimens and procedures firmly in place.

The VA is now planning to inspect — unannounced — all of its health facilities in the country by July 31.

It is unforgiveable that any medical facility would be nonchalant about the well-known possibility of infecting patients.