I’m getting an endoscope exam of my stomach this Friday. (I think it’s just stress, but the doctor wants to be sure). They did a blood test (HIV, Hep B, and a couple others) “to prevent infection.”
Huh? If I’ve already got one of the diseases, I can’t catch it from myself, so it must be to protect other people. But whom? The doctor/nurse/technitian? The next guy they’re going to stick the endoscope into? Does that mean there are certain precautions they’ll take if and only if I have those viruses? I must say I find it slightly unnerving.
I suppose they want to know what they’re likely to catch should a gusher emerge from your throat for whatever reason. The best part of the endoscopic exam is where they inflate your empty stomach to get a good look at the lining (they let you watch on the tv, but it’s a little dificult to concentrate) and ask you to try and keep the air down and not burp. Hello? I have a large tube down my throat and the last thing on my mind right now is trying to please you. Best thing about it? It’s over pretty quickly.
Yes, they want to know what kind of buggies you have.
If you’re clean, they don’t have to set up precautionary safeguards that protect them and slow down the procedure. Also, if they somehow come in direct contact with your bodily fluids, they’ll want to know if they just have to wash up or start on a series of anti-HIV meds.
Having had this type of procedure more than once, as well as colonoscopy and a few other niceities, I can firmly say, without hesitation, that I am no better qualified to answer this question than anyone else not in the medical profession.
But, I too was tested for a variety of infections, including Hep A, B, and the more insidious C, but mainly to find out (according to the doc) if they were the CAUSE of my problem, and knowledge about such an infection would direct them accordingly.
My God, let the doctors have as much medically-related information about you as possible, so they can make informed decisions about your health and not merely educated guesses. Let them draw blood! Let them test it for anything and everything suspect! They need the FULL picture, not a small portion of it.
Wrath, I don’t mind at all that they did the blood test. As unpleasent as the test sounds, giving the test must be even more unpleasent and dangerous (at least I’d find it unpleasent), and I fully understand that the doctors need to protect themselves. What made me worried was, if I need to get tested to protect the next patient, then it follows that there is a chance I’ll catch something from the previous patient. But I guess in this day and age that’s pretty unlikely, even in a backward country like Japan.
And the info sheet they gave me made it clear that the primary purpose of the blood test was to “prevent intra-hospital infection” (direct translation), a term usually used to refer to patients in hospital getting infection from other patients. (What’s the proper English term for that?)
I guess that last thing a hospital needs is a lawsuit levied by the HIV-free guy who left the hospital with an infection due to poor sanitation habits, but you think those habits would be dictated by the lowest common denominator.
Anyway, all the scoping I had done was under general anesthesia. Felt nothing, remember nothing, thank GOD. One second you’re on a gurney, next you’re waking up, groggy, with a cup of apple juice in your hands. Very surreal.
Another possibility is that something ruptures when they do their deal in your stomach. You don’t want badly infected blood running around vital organs - or even at all. Just a thought.
One of the biggest problems in hospitals is nosocomial infections (which I may have misspelled.) That is, infections the patients didn’t have when they checked in. Lots of folks die from NI’s. Thus, they want to know what you dragged in with you, and they want a baseline, so they’ll know if you got some subsequent infection FROM THEM.
Yeah, the scopes & other equipment is very tricky to clean completely. Ever see those 6 foot tubes with a camera on them? Tricky to clean. They talked about this on tv once and what you might get from them.
About a month ago, I had a flexible sigmoidoscopy (with NO anesthetic, not even a freakin’ valium) and they didn’t do any bloodwork. Odd…I’ll have to ask a friend of mine who just had an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (I love that word)at the same facility a while ago and see if they tested her beforehand. I kind of doubt it, I used to order all sorts of endoscopic examinations when I scheduled patient appointments, and I’d order up the blood tests as well as anything else the doctor wanted done, and not once was I told to order an HIV or hepatitis test. Weird…
I’ll take Universal Precautions for $100.00, Alex.
If they are running the tests for their own safety/peace of mind (and they very well may be), they are kidding themselves. It also calls into question their infection-control practices. One can have a number of infections prior to seroconverting - your infected, but haven’t yet raised enough of an antibody response for the infection to be detected. HIV epitomizes this: generalizing, there is a 3-6 month window between infection and seroconversion. Hence, the advent of Universal Precautions. You treat ALL blood and body fluids as potentially infectious. If I’m on the scope team, and someone says "we don’t have to take the usual precautions, this person is ‘clean’ ", I’m out the door. If I’m the patient on the bed, I’m gone, and I ain’t comin’ back.
I could see working a GI patient up for Hep, and possibly HIV (although that is a reach clinically), to do so solely because you are going in for a scope makes no sense. Regardless of how you test, the personnel must act as if you are potentially infective, and equipment must be cleaned as if it is contaminated.
Ask them the rationale for the test - not just “prevent infection”, but how that will serve that end. Then ask them about equipment maintenance. Then off-handedly throw in a question about their last Joint Commission (or JCAHO - “Jay-co”) visit.
There was a post recently about a woman who got some simple surgery & the doctor tested her for those things too & he wouldn’t do the surgery if she tested positive for any of it.
All medical offices I’ve been to (and I’ve been to a lot) as well as the hosipital and pharmacy I worked at followed Universal Blood and Body Fluid Percautions http://chef.fab.albany.edu/deptment/ehs/bbp.htm
In a nutshell, ALL fluids are treated as known contaminated. If you ever have concerns (like in the OP), you should ask your doctor. Why ask us? He or she should know exactly why the tests are being done, and should share that information with you and put your mind at ease.
Zette
The above post is based on MY personal experience in the health field. Your milage and experience may vary.
