Occupational exposures to blood and bloodborne viruses (ie, hepatitis B virus [HBV], hepatitis C virus [HCV], and human immunodeficiency virus [HIV]) have been a concern in the United States for more than a decade. Several studies have been conducted to assess the magnitude of the problem and to evaluate prevention strategies. The risk of occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens is influen...

BACKGROUND Current occupational and public health guidance does not distinguish between rendering plant workers and cullers/poultry workers in terms of infection risk in their respective roles during highly pathogenic avian influenza poultry outbreaks. We describe an operational approach to human health risk assessment decision making at a large rendering plant processing poultry carcasses stem...

This article presents a case of a 40-year-old female patient with a right-side middle ear tuberculosis. The patient was a nurse, who had worked at the Department of Pulmology, Clinical Hospital Rijeka for 17 years. The cause was infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis while she assisted in bronchoscopy. The patient was referred to occupational medicine (OM) for confirmation of occupational di...

BACKGROUND Primary health care workers (HCWs) represent a growing occupational group worldwide. They are at risk of infection with blood-borne pathogens because of occupational exposures to blood and body fluids (BBF). AIM To investigate BBF exposure and its associated factors among primary HCWs. METHODS Cross-sectional study among workers from municipal primary health care centres in Flori...

Occupationally Acquired HIV Infection Among Health Care Workers — United States, 1985–2013 M. Patricia Joyce, MD1, David Kuhar, MD2, John T. Brooks, MD1 (Author affiliations at end of text) Case investigations of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in health care workers (HCWs) possibly acquired by exposure to HIV in the workplace are conducted by state health department HIV surveillan...

Objective To estimate the lifetime and 12-month prevalence of occupational exposure to body fluids among health-care workers in Africa. Methods Embase®, PubMed® and CINAHL databases were systematically searched for studies published between January 2000 and August 2017 that reported the prevalence of occupational exposure to blood or other body fluids among health-care workers in Africa. The ...

CONTEXT Studies on experimental animals have shown liver is a common target of chemical carcinogens; this might suggest that occupational exposure to chemicals is another risk factor for HCC. However, the relationship between occupation and liver cancer has not been extensively studied, with the exception of the known association between vinyl chloride and angiosarcoma of the liver. EVIDENCE ...

CONTEXT Infection control interventions are important for containing surgery-related infections. For this reason, the modern operating room (OR) should have well-developed infection control policies. The efficacy of these policies depends on how well the OR staff adhere to them. There is a lack of available data documenting adherence to infection control policies. OBJECTIVE To evaluate OR sta...

BACKGROUND There are six known cases of occupational human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seroconversion in Brazil. However, there are neither published cases of occupational hepatitis C virus (HCV) seroconversion nor systematic studies of blood and body fluid exposures (BBFE) that could estimate the risk of HCV or HIV occupational seroconversion in Brazil. AIMS To describe the outcomes of BBFE...

Using the database of the Korea Labor Welfare Corporation (KLWC), which is the public organization for workers' compensation in Korea, we analyzed the occupational infectious diseases among the health care workers who were compensated by the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance (IACI). From January 1998 to December 2004, 307 cases of infectious diseases were approved as being cases of occ...