18 North Carolina patients may have been exposed to rare brain disease
Eighteen neurological patients in North Carolina may have been exposed to an incurable and fatal disorder similar to "mad cow" disease while undergoing surgery at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center because surgical instruments were insufficiently sterilized, the hospital said on Monday.
Surgeons operated on the 18 patients on January 18 using tools that had not been sufficiently sanitized after they were used on a man suspected of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the hospital in Winston-Salem said in a press statement.
"On behalf of the entire team at Novant Health, I apologize to the patients and their families for having caused this anxiety," Jeff Lindsay, president of the medical center, said at a news conference.
CJD causes failing memory, blindness, involuntary movement and coma, and kills 90 percent of patients within one year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The condition is similar to mad cow disease, but is not linked to beef consumption.
Read More: http://news.yahoo.com/18-north-carolina-patients-may-exposed-rare-brain-021843324.html;_ylt=AwrTWfx2l_lSjzgA5g_QtDMD
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Having trouble with this statement.
Meat or other products from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease"
, recognized in the mid-1990s as the cause of variant CJD (vCJD). Scientists traced this new type of CJD to consumption of beef from cattle whose feed included processed brain tissue from other animals.
http://www.alz.org/dementia/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd-symptoms.asp
also: http://www.mercola.com/beef/mad_cow_disease.htm
