EGAD!Woman Says She Contracted HIV From Contaminated Tissue

[alicia-w]

From one of the Pensacola news stations:



A local woman has tested positive for HIV...and it could be the result of a product she received in a routine surgery.
The surgery took place at Sacred Heart Hospital one year ago...but the woman was only notified there might be a problem in January.
Channel Three's Greg Neumann spoke with the woman and her attorney this afternoon.
The woman in question is 65 years old, has been married over 30 years and does not want to be identified...but says she wants someone to pay.
She thinks she contracted HIV from bone tissue that was illegally stolen from corpses.
She went in for a very common cervical fusion surgery last March...where doctors implanted a bone graft into her neck.
In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of certain bone, skin and ligament tissue.
And in January, the woman's neurosurgeon sent her a letter notifiying her some of that tissue may have been used in her surgery.
The tissue was harvested by a company in New Jersey called Biomedical Tissue Services.
That company is now being investigated for allegedly stealing tissue from corpses at a New York funeral home...skipping the mandatory disease screening process....then sending it onto a company called Regeneration Technologies for cleaning.
From there some of it went to Medtronic...a large distributor of such tissue.
Medtronic treated and processed the tissue...and sold it to Sacred Heart Hospital....and a doctor there finally implanted it into the woman.
She's since had three blood tests, all paid for by Medtronic.
She tested positive for HIV on the first test, negative on the second, and is still awaiting the results of a third test.

Marcus Michles/Attorney: "What we do know at this point is, that after complying with all of their requirements, she has tested positive for HIV, and that is a dramatic and unique problem right now."

Dr. Timothy Brooks, M.D./Michles and Booth Medical Director: "She's such a low-risk category, and without going into details, it's very unlikely it came from any other source."

In its recall announcement, the FDA states that while it believes the risks from these tissues are low because of the processing methods they undergo...the actual risk of infection is unknown.
What attorney Marcus Michles calls troubling...is that it's unknown how many other local implant patients may have received this tissue.

[GulfBreezer]

Un-Freakin-Believable!!!!

How scary is that???

[GalvestonDuck]

She thinks she contracted HIV from bone tissue that was illegally stolen from corpses.

Since the virus doesn't live outside the human body for very long, I find that hard to believe. A corpse could be found to be HIV+, however, the virus might not still be alive when the test is done.

[vbhoutex]

She thinks she contracted HIV from bone tissue that was illegally stolen from corpses.

Since the virus doesn't live outside the human body for very long, I find that hard to believe. A corpse could be found to be HIV+, however, the virus might not still be alive when the test is done.

I guess my question her would be if the virus might act any differently in bone(length of viability)vs what is normal as you said Duckie.

[gtalum]

The HIV test will give false positives a small percentage of the time, but will almost never register a false negative. Since her second test was negative, she is probably in the clear.

[alicia-w]

There are false negatives.

http://www.afa.org.sg/issue/issue20/medical.html

[alicia-w]

So how do people get HIV from infected blood if it doesnt live outside the body?

[GalvestonDuck]

So how do people get HIV from infected blood if it doesnt live outside the body?

I said it doesn't live "for very long" outside the body. It begins to die and weaken when not exposed to living cells. The problem with blood transfusion transmissions (which are next to nil now thanks to testing), there once was a greater chance of infection because of the large amount of body fluid passing from one body (donor) to another (recipient) -- an entire pint.

[alicia-w]

ok. i was worried there for a sec. i thought i knew something about that subject since my brother contracted HIV through a blood transfusion 20 years ago.

[gtalum]

There are false negatives.

As your link noted, false negatives only happen when the testing is done to soon after infection, within a month or two, and the body hasn't built enough antibodies to detect yet. However, she was tested over a year after her procedure where it is suspected she may have contracted the virus.

[GalvestonDuck]

ok. i was worried there for a sec. i thought i knew something about that subject since my brother contracted HIV through a blood transfusion 20 years ago.

Yup, sorry if I wasn't clear. There's never been a doubt about contraction of the virus after transfusion of blood products. I'm just glad they figured it out and started thorough testing and screening. I'm just sorry it wasn't in time for your brother.

[alicia-w]

he's doing really well, actually. it's the bipolar depression that's kicking his butt!

[Merovingian]

This smells very much like an urban legend.

[alicia-w]

it came from a local TV station.

[Merovingian]

Maybe you can find something about it on the Internet?

[alicia-w]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Health/story?id=1701325&page=1

[alicia-w]

Here's a woman who claims to have contracted syphilis:

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... /601250348

[GalvestonDuck]

This smells very much like an urban legend.

Not all urban legends are actually false stories. Some are true...and that makes them legends just the same. Some of false and, therefore, myths.

[alicia-w]

This is hopefully the final episode of this story: (courtesy of WEAR TV, Pensacola)

Woman Tests Negative For H-I-V On Third Test

A follow up now to a story we first told you about on Tuesday...regarding a 65 year-old woman who tested positive once for HIV...and negative once.

The woman was tested after finding out doctors implanted bone tissue into her neck...that was illegally harvested from a cadaver that was never screened for diseases.

The woman tested positive on her first test, but negative on her second.

She found out today that the third test also came back negative for HIV.

The woman's attorney, Marcus Michles, says he will now hire an independent hematologist to conduct a fourth test.

The first three tests were paid for by Medtronic...the distributor who sent the tissue to Sacred Heart Hospital, where the surgery was performed in March of 2005.

The tissue was originally harvested from funeral homes in New York...by a firm called Bio-medical Tissue Services.

Sacred Heart's Chief Medical Director says the hospital notified seven different physicians that there were 14 patients in all that had received the recalled tissue.

Dr. Michael Brown/Sacred Heart Hospital: "In speaking with the physicians, some of them believe that the risk of disease transmission is so small that they've chosen not to call the patients and get them unduly concerned."

Sacred Heart would not release the names of those physicians...but the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control recommend all physicians provide the affected patients access to appropriate infectious disease testing...regardless of how low the risk might be.

In a statement issued today, Sacred Heart stated:
"In our opinion, the story caused needless fear, anxiety and confusion among patients in our community. While the reporter apparently had been told by the attorney that a second test for HIV in his client was negative (meaning no HIV), the WEAR report still went ahead to emphasize that the woman had tested positive."