Med Mal News

Following the discovery in January 2008 that three patients at the Endoscopy Center of Nevada had developed acute cases of hepatitis C, the Southern Nevada Health District published a warning to patients of the Center, advising those who received injected anesthesia medication there between March 2004 and Jan. 11, 2008 to be tested for hepatitis C as well as hepatitis B and HIV. Thus far, six patients of the Center have been found to be infected. The Health District determined that the infections were caused by the patients' exposure to the blood of other patients through unsafe anesthesia injection practices: A syringe used to inject anesthesia was used again to draw more anesthesia from the vial, then anesthesia from that same vial was used on another patient. Although in employing this method the syringes used on subsequent patients were new ones, the anesthesia drawn from the used vials was likely to have been tainted with the blood of the previous patient(s).