Needlestick Injuries Common Among Surgery Students
Mar. 23 -- WEDNESDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- American surgeons-in-training stick themselves far too often with needles that could carry infection, and they often fail to report that they've done so.
That's the conclusion of a new study in the June 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"We were all alarmed at how great the magnitude of the problem appears to be," said lead author Dr. Martin A. Makary, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Surgical Outcomes Research.
The study of almost 700 surgeons-in-training at 17 U.S. medical centers found that 582 had experienced a needlestick injury. In more than half the cases, the needles were being used for high-risk patients -- those with particularly dangerous infections, such as hepatitis or HIV. And 297 of the 578 most recent incidents had not been reported to an employee health service, including 15 of the 91 cases involving high-risk patients.
That needlestick injuries occur in surgery and that many are not reported at once is not surprising, Makary said.
"Part of the surgical culture has been maintaining the patient first at all cost, and when an accident occurs in the operating room, the surgeon's first inclination is to continue with the operation," he said. "But the extent of the problem is much greater than we thought. Previous estimates of injuries understate the magnitude of the problem, because most of the injuries are not being recorded."
It has been estimated that one of every 50 needlesticks involving hepatitis B and one of every 100 involving HIV results in an infection, Makary said, making them "a significant public health problem." He assigned blame for the problem to both medical institutions and individual physicians.
"More hospitals need to do a better job in protection," Makary said. "They need more appropriate and more timely surgical systems so surgeons can get medical treatment immediately, not after a long bureaucratic process that takes them away from the patient."
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