Articles Tagged With: TB
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With No Annual HCW Screening, Treatment of Latent TB Imperative
The CDC dropped its labor-intensive recommendation for annual routine screening of healthcare workers for tuberculosis (TB) in 2019. However, there are multiple TB issues with which occupational health departments must contend. These include post-hire pre-placement testing, treating latent TB that could activate later in life, identifying and following up on worker exposures, and the threat of multidrug-resistant strains.
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TB Rates Are Rising Again
In 2020, the TB rate dropped to 2.2, possibly because COVID-19 demanded public health resources that might have been used to detect it, and travel and immigration declined. After a small rebound in 2021, TB levels climbed to 2.5 cases per 1,000 people in 2022. There were more than 8,000 cases, and the CDC said TB was returning to pre-pandemic levels.
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Dozens of Healthcare Workers Infected in Bone Graft TB Outbreak
A national Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak caused TB seroconversion in 73 healthcare workers exposed to patients who underwent spinal bone grafts with a contaminated allograph product. No workers developed active infection, and all were successfully treated for this strain of TB, which was not drug resistant. -
Bad to the Bone: Huge TB Outbreak Traced to One Donor
A massive Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak spread to 81 bone tissue recipients in 20 states, leading to multiple patient deaths and 73 latent infections in healthcare workers, investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report.
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Cancer Patients Urged to be Tested for TB in Seattle
Some 140 cancer patients at two healthcare facilities in Seattle have been advised to seek testing for tuberculosis after a healthcare worker with latent tuberculosis infection developed active disease that went undiagnosed for some time.
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TB Q&A for patients after exposure incidents
As part of notifying patients of a possible TB exposure to an infected employee, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, CA, issued the following “frequently asked questions” TB information for patients. Employee health professionals may want to consider something like this should they find themselves facing a similar situation:
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Parents of 350 babies warned of possible TB transmission from infected worker
As patient notifications of potential exposures to infectious disease go, it doesn’t get much worse than telling parents their newborn baby may be in danger.
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Special Coverage: 9th Conference on Retroviruses - TB, pneumonia deaths down, but heart attacks up
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Risk of infection, death from TB in health care
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OSHA may try to salvage less ‘burdensome’ version of TB reg for health care