Feb. 28, 2008

Thousands Are Warned of Clinic’s Dirty Syringes

By Steve Friess

LAS VEGAS — Thousands of patients may have been exposed to the hepatitis C virus because of an inappropriate medical practice at an outpatient clinic here over the past four years, state health officials said Wednesday.

After six patients who were anesthetized at the clinic last year were given diagnoses of acute hepatitis C, a Clark County investigation observed that the clinic was not using clean syringes for each injection.

Clinicians giving patients multiple shots of certain medications were using the same syringes to dip back into the vials, allowing for the chance of an infected patient’s virus to contaminate the medication for others, said Brian Labus, senior epidemiologist of the Southern Nevada Health District.

The district has sent warnings to all patients at the clinic, the Endoscopy Center of Nevada, who were injected with anesthesia from March 2004 to last Jan. 11, when the problem was discovered. The number was about 40,000.

"It didn't just happen one time," Mr. Labus said. "This is the way they did things at the clinic. It's the way they have always done things."

The practice was halted when it was found, Mr. Labus said.

Many patients who contract the blood-borne hepatitis C are asymptomatic for many years. The disease can cause lifelong problems, including long-term liver damage without the carriers' knowledge and early symptoms like jaundice, nausea and fatigue. It is most often transmitted by sharing unclean needles and syringes, Mr. Labus said.

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