Serological studies on health care workers caring for patients with human immunodeficiency virus

Between 1982 and July 1987, more than 1200 patients attending St Stephen's Hospital were found to be HIV antibody positive. Four hundred were inpatients and most of the outpatients attended the sexually transmitted disease clinic. Two hundred and twenty-one patients had AIDS, 480 HIV-related disorders and 500 were asymptomatic. Most inpatients had invasive procedures within the operating theatres and there were 25 postmortems. Four hundred and five antibody tests from 220 health care workers from the STD clinic, operating theatres, isolation ward, intensive care unit and clinical laboratories were voluntarily tested for HIV antibody by an ELISA screening method. All were negative, except one male nurse who had other risk factors. Twenty-nine staff suffered needlestick injury with blood of HIV antibody positive patients; none has developed serological evidence of HIV infection.