Hospital to 18 people: You may have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob - CNN.com
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Hospital to 18 patients: You may have been exposed to incurable disease
"Doctors and hospital officials from Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, are notifying 18 neurosurgery patients that they might have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a serious and incurable neurological disorder.
"Today we are reaching out to 18 neurosurgery patients who were exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease over the last three weeks at Forsyth Medical Center," said Jeff Lindsay, president of the center, according to CNN affiliate WGHP.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, CJD affects about one person in every one million people per year worldwide.
The hospital confirmed that on January 18, an operation was performed on a patient with CJD symptoms who later tested positive for the illness.
Even though the surgical instruments were sterilized by standard hospital procedures, they should have gone through enhanced sterilization procedures used when there are confirmed or suspected cases of CJD."