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Risk of infection from needle reuse at a phlebotomy center
T C Porco1, T J Aragón, S E Fernyak
1Community Health Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Effectiveness Research Unit, San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, Calif., USA.
Objectives:
This study determined infection risk for HIV, hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) from needle reuse at a phlebotomy center that possibly exposed 3810 patients to infection.
Methods:
We used a model for the risk of infection per blood draw, supplemented by subsequent testing results from 1699 patients.
Results:
The highest risk of transmission was for HBV infection: 1.1 x 10(-6) in the best case and 1.2 x 10(-3) in the (unlikely) worst case. Subsequent testing yielded prevalence rates of 0.12%, 0.41%, and 0.88% for HIV, HBV, and HCV, respectively, lower than National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III prevalence estimates.
Conclusions:
The infection risk was very low; few, if any, transmissions are likely to have occurred.
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