Friday, Feb. 7, 1986
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
11
Hospitals plea for relief
United Press International
BOSTON — Hard-hit hospitals with backed-up emergency rooms and dwindling operating room schedules clamored yesterday for relief from soaring malpractice premiums.
The premiums have prompted a slowdown by half of the state's obstetricians and orthopedic surgeons, who are protesting the premium increases.
"Our ability to treat patients is being affected," said spokesman Robert Johnson at Norwood Hospital, where all of the obstetricians have stopped seeing new patients and the orthopedic surgeons have ceased surgery.
Orthopedic patients caught in the doctors' protest are being transferred by ambulance to other hospitals. With five orthopedic patients being transferred within a 24-hour period, Johnson said, the
immediate result was a backup in the emergency room.
Norwood Hospital administrators, along with others running hospitals in similar situations, have been telephoning the office of Gov. Michael Dukakis and legislators in hopes of getting a speedy solution to the skvrocketing rates.
The physicians are protesting an average 62 percent hike in malpractice premiums that will climb to between $40,000 and $60,000 a year beginning April 30 — fees many physicians say will eat up their income and savings.
The doctors are particularly angry over a Dec. 27 ruling by the State DiySION of Insurance which hiked the premiums retroactive to 1983 based on increasing jury awards and escalating claims,
"The situation has become acute," Johnson said on the fourth day of the job action. "And next
week we're going to see the impact on operating room schedules."
Noting that orthopedic surgery normally constitutes 10 percent of admissions, Johnson said, the curtailment of services would have a significant financial effect.
Spokeswoman Rigney Cunningham said, "The problem is reaching crisis proportions. We're telling legislators they have a responsibility to the community to act soon."
At Newton-Wellesley Hospital, where 75 percent of the obstetricians stopped accepting new patients, administrators invited lawmakers to come to the hospital and discuss the situation.
She said pregnant women without doctors were being advised to go to other obstetricians or the hospital's prenatal clinic for treatment by nurse practitioners.
First case of child giving AIDS to his mother reported by CDC
United Press International
ATLANTA — Federal health officials reported the first case of a child giving AIDS to his mother yesterday but said the incident did not indicate that routine contact could cause the disease.
The national Centers for Disease Control said the 2-year-old child contracted acquired immunity deficiency syndrome through a blood transfusion and passed it on to the mother during nursing care that involved extensive unprotected exposure to the child's blood and body secretions and excretions.
"Transmission of the HTLV-3-LAV (AIDS) infection from child to parent has not been previously reported," the CDC said.
The CDC, which has said there has been no evidence to show that AIDS
is spread by casual contact, said "the contact between the reported mother and child is not typical of the usual contact that could be expected in a family setting.
"None of the family members of the over 17,000 AIDS patients reported to CDC have been reported to have AIDS, except a small number of sexual partners of patients, children born to infected mothers, or family members who themselves had other established risk factors for AIDS."
It said seven studies involving over 350 family members of both adults and children with AIDS had found no evidence of AIDS transmission within families other than among sex partners, children born to infected mothers or family members with risk factors for AIDS.
One such report published this
week in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the risk of acquiring AIDS through household contact was virtually non-existent.
Dr. Harold Jaffe of the CDC's AIDS task force said, "This mother was extensively involved in the nursing care of her child, both in the hospital and the home. That care caused her to have frequent contact with the child's blood, and she was presumably infected through that contact.
"This is not the situation we would see for the majority of family members treating AIDS patients. In no way do we think this represents some kind of casual contact transmission. It is an unusual case."
The CDC said the mother did not take precautions to prevent infection with the AIDS virus, such as wearing gloves.
Doctor says serum causes false results
United Press International
CHICAGO — AIDS antibodies have been found in a common blood preparation used in warding off measles and hepatitis, but federal authorities did not tell physicians about it, a doctor said yesterday.
A person cannot contract AIDS by being injected with gamma globulin, the blood preparation, because it contained only antibodies to the AIDS virus and not the virus itself. However, the preparation can trigger a positive AIDS antibody test, said Dr. Donald Steele, a California dermatologist.
Such a false report could devastate a patient emotionally and subject a physician to legal liability, Steele said in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, while not disputing the facts, said Steele was overreacting to a theoretical problem.
"We're not even aware of a case where (a false positive test) has occurred," said Dr. Thomas Zuck of the FDA's Blood and Blood Products division. "There's an enormous number of theoretical cases possible when you're dealing with something like this."
Zuck said he was not surprised when Steele told him that two samples of gamma globulin had turned up positive for antibodies to HTLV-3, the virus thought to be responsible for the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. He said gamma globulin was derived in part from the blood plasma of hepatitis victims, many of whom also have been exposed to the AIDS virus.
Although the FDA knew it was possible that an injection of tainted preparation could cause the false positive test, Zuck said, the agency chose not to make a public statement
Zuck said it had not been proven that contaminated gamma globulin could trigger a positive AIDS test.
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