Creuzfeldt-Jakob is a rare but fatal neurological condition that is more commonly known as mad cow disease. The name mad cow is misleading, but CJD can be acquired by eating contaminated beef, although this is very rare.
So, why are 38 surgery patients in the UK at risk for developing CJD? First, you have to understand the disease. It is a prion disease, meaning that it is spread by proteins called prions. These prions are harder to kill than your average bacteria or other organisms.
Higher temperatures are required to kill prions than other contaminants that may appear on surgical instruments. So the normal autoclave temperatures, chemicals and other cleaning methods are not good enough if they have been used on a patients who has a prion disease.
Luckily, prion diseases are rare, but not rare enough for the 38 patients who had surgery after the CJD patient in 2007. The instruments were cleaned between surgeries, but due to the nature of prion diseases, that may not have been good enough. The instruments have now all been pulled from circulation, but not before being used repeatedly.
So the bad news is that CJD can be spread with surgical instruments. The good news is that these patients would be likely to have shown symptoms by now, and only six cases of spreading CJD via contaminated instruments have happened worldwide.
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