Can You Get Mad Cow From A Root Canal?
British government scientific advisers informed health ministers yesterday that patients undergoing routine dental work for root canal issues may have been exposed to the human form of BSE (commonly known as Mad Cow Disease or vCJD) because instruments had previously been used on patients a;ready unwittingly carrying the incurable disease. Approximately 3 million such treatments are done every year in England and Wales and the health ministers were instructed to consider banning the reuse of the equipement needed due to “hypothetical but plausible scenarios.”
Seac, the independent expert committee on BSE and variant CJD, claims that sufficient decontamination is difficult to achieve for the dental instruments used to examine the pulp in teeth cavities. Currently, approximately six instruments are used for each procedure and they can be reused up to ten times. Seac recommends disposable, single use repleacements to eliminate this risk.
Seac, in a statement posted on its website yesterday, stressed there were still “no definite or suspected cases of vCJD transmission” but said prions were more resistant to disinfection and sterilisation than other infectious agents and there was no data on vCJD infectivity in dental pulp.
The Department of Health said last night that it would consider Seac’s “precautionary” advice “and then begin discussions with the relevant bodies … there is a small but hypothetical risk that vCJD could be transmitted through [these] procedures. This is a complex area and Seac will review new evidence as it emerges.” [“Advisers warn of vCJD risk to dental patients” (SocietyGuardian.co.uk)]
tags: Mad Cow Disease, UK, vCJD, BSE
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