There is more evidence that a patient's chance of catching the AIDS virus from an infected doctor is extremely remote.
A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the largest yet, has found no evidence that 63 infected physicians and dentists passed the virus to their surgical patients.Of the 22,032 patients tested in the study, 112 did have HIV. Twenty-seven were infected before seeing their doctor or dentist; 59 had numerous other risk factors, such as intravenous drug use and unprotected sex, that the CDC ruled were to blame.
The CDC did genetic tests on 16 others who had no clear HIV risks, but none had HIV that matched the genetic code of their doctors' virus.
The remaining 10 cases are still being investigated.
The CDC is continuing the study, but it already shows "the risk of HIV transmission from the health- care worker to the patient during invasive procedures is very small," CDC researcher Laurie Robert told an AIDS conference Wednesday.
But the operating room is not totally free of danger, the CDC said. Another CDC study found that of 43 obstetricians and gynecologists cut while operating, nine continued using the same needle or scalpel to complete the operation. These doctors did not have the HIV virus, but the numbers were disturbing, scientists said.
The possibility of a risk to patients from infected doctors has frightened Americans since the CDC discovered that a Florida dentist, Dr. David Acer, infected six of his patients with the deadly virus. No one knows just how Acer, now dead, did so, but some experts speculate the infections may have been deliberate.
And just this week, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that hundreds of former patients of a doctor who died of AIDS can sue his estate and clinic for emotional distress, even though no patient was diagnosed with the disease.
The CDC recorded 903 cases of AIDS among doctors and 243 cases among dentists through 1992. The Acer case is the only one in which doctor-to-patient transmission has been proved.
Doctors are in more danger from their patients, the CDC said. In the study of obstetricians and gynecologists, some blood or other fluids from patients touched doctors' skin in 41 percent of 646 gynecological procedures, and in 7 percent of those cases the doctors cut themselves with instruments already used on the patient.