Surgeon Passed AIDS Virus Between Patients
For the first time since the beginning of the epidemic, a surgeon apparently has unintentionally passed the AIDS virus from one of his patients to four others during routine surgical procedures.
Although “no precise event has been reported” to explain how the virus was passed to the Australian surgeon’s patients, Dr. Harold Jaffe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said his agency suspects that the doctor, whose practice is in Sydney, made some error in his infection-control practices.
Australian authorities first learned of two strange cases of women in their 80s developing AIDS symptoms earlier this year.
The officials discovered that the two women--who did not know one another--had seen the same physician on the same day in 1989, for outpatient surgery to remove moles. Further investigation revealed that two other women had seen the doctor the same day, and that they too had been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.
A fifth individual--a gay man--was also in the doctor’s office that day, officials said. He died last year of AIDS.
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