The Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation is offering blood tests to patients treated at their dental clinic between Sept 13 - 21 after the clinic learned that some instruments were only partially sterilized.
Thirteen instruments were incompletely sterilized and possibly used on patients during the nine-day period. During that time, 191 patients received treatment. YKHC is contacting all of them for testing for Hepatitis B, C, and HIV. The good news is that the tests are free and risk of infection is low.
“The risk is so low that the CDC and State Epidemiology did not recommend a need for doing testing," said YKHC Vice President of Communications Tiffany Zulkosky. "And so really, going through this process for YKHC is to help quell concerns among any patients that might have been treated.”
John Nick of Bethel is one of the patients the agency contacted to get tested. He had a routine, bi-annual appointment on September 21, the last day of the suspected timeframe.
“Five days later I end up getting a call stating that I needed to go to get a blood test, and they wouldn’t tell me any reason as to why I had to,” Nick said.
Nick got his blood drawn Tuesday, but said he was still having a hard time getting information from YKHC.
“And I called them a second time asking them, and they said my manager will give you a call back, and I still haven’t heard a word from them,” he said.
Though Nick had not been called back by Wednesday afternoon, that morning YKHC issued a press release on the issue and posted information on their website. Nick is now seeking legal representation against YKHC through Valcarce Law Office.
To arrange a blood test, Bethel-based patients can do a walk-in. Just check in at registration and ask for a test in the lab. Village-based patients will be contacted by health care providers who’ll arrange blood tests for them in the village or in Bethel.
Anyone who gets tested will also need a follow-up test in January. The first test is to see if the patient already has an infection. The second test is to see if the patient has developed an infection that could be linked to YKHC’s instruments. This is because it takes weeks to months before a test can detect the infections in the body.
Zulkosky says that of all the people treated by the clinic only a few were exposed to unsanitary dental tools.
“Of the 191 in the population that were treated during that week," she said, "only 13 might have been infected. No more than 13, but possibly less.”
YKHC isn’t able to trace which instruments were used on which patients.
In a follow up email, Zulkosky wrote: "The CDC classifies these types of incidents into Category A and Category B. Category A means patient notification and testing is usually warranted and an identifiable or significant risk of blood borne pathogen transmission exists, whereas Category B is lower risk and other considerations are needed when considering testing. The CDC considers the incident at the Bethel Dental Clinic Category B and, therefore, low risk. Although notifications and testing were not recommended, they agreed with our decision (and the practice) to do so."
YKHC Vice President of Hospital Services Jim Sweeney says that the clinic discovered the error on Sept 21.
“One of the technicians who was preparing to get a patient ready for a dentist noticed that the bag that she had was not sterilized. So she brought that up to her superior’s attention," Sweeney said. "And then we began to do our inspection of our stock, and then we started to look back on the records to find out why that bag got out there.”
Sweeney says the dental clinic has made changes to prevent this from happening again.
“We’ve put [on] additional people, additional sign-offs on the sterilization, [and] assigned specific people to sterilization. We’re also doing a time-out for sterilization at the patient’s chair. So prior to a dentist working on a patient, they’re doing a time-out and verifying that the equipment was all sterilized.”
YKHC also plans to bring in an outside sterilization expert to review the processes in the dental clinic and throughout the hospital.
Anyone with medical questions can talk with a nurse by calling 1-844-543-6361.
Update: This story has been updated with information from Zulkosky explaining the CDC's categories for whether or not to recommend testing in these instances.
