[Histonet] TB Exposure

[Andrew Kennedy]

Hi Karen and other Histonetters,


We had a case several years ago where the lung we did frozens on turned out
to be TB and a pathologist actually contracted the disease. After exhaustive
investigation it was determined that the lung frozens were probably the only
contact she had with TB. Therefore, it is possible and probable that you
could catch it from these specimens. I would be inclined to make gloves,
gown and mask mandatory universal precautions for all lung specimens. If you
have a biological safety cabinet, even better.  By the way, we used to
freeze our tissues for frozen section using a blast of CO2 - great for TB
aerosol creation! We no longer do this of course!!

 

We have a good system where our staff medical centre does Mantoux tests on
all the lab people every two years. Those staff members that are negative
have the option to get the BCG vax and those that develop a positive
reaction after previously being negative are followed up by the chest clinic
- chest x-rays and an appointment with a chest physician. Staff medical also
offer flu, HepA, HepB, MMR, Tetanus vax and more.they even tested us all for
lead exposure when high amounts of lead was found in the dust coming out of
our air conditioning ducts (we were all negative, thank goodness!)

 

Andrew Kennedy

Senior Science Officer

Anatomical Pathology

Concord Repatriation General Hospital

Hospital Road
Concord NSW 2139

 ph: +612 9767 6115

Fax +612 9767 8427

"corpora non agunt nisi fixata"