He said OSHA should check this equipment every six months.
Another authority, David Schwartz, director of the Citizens Against Cross-Contamination, a public health advocacy organization, said that "one of medicines dirtiest secrets is that equipment is disinfected and can still carry fecal matter, mucus or blood."
The risk of contracting hepatitis C flared throughout the city last week when eight patients were treated for symptoms related to the liver disease at the Bay Ridge Endoscopy and Digestive Health Center in Brooklyn. It led to a malpractice suit filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn by an elementary school teacher, Deborah Postler and her husband Stephen.
They charged that the clinics doctors were negligent in treating her.
Health officials said that it is unknown whether the infection in Brooklyn was transmitted through the endoscopic procedure in which a flexible tube with a lighted lens on the end is used to look into the esophagus or stomach. The clinic may have exposed as many as 2,200 patients to hepatitis C. There is no vaccine available to prevent the condition.
Basu said many doctors offices dont own the Custom Ultrasonic equipment that carefully sterilizes endoscopic equipment.
"It costs $34,000 in all," he said. "It should be standard medical equipment for the protection of patients. Other methods involving cleaning the equipment by hand expose patients to hepatitis C risks."
Basu said his Forest Hills office treats 300 hepatitis C patients and 150 hepatitis B patients. He and other Queens liver specialist treat record levels of hepatitis cases because of large numbers of immigrants living in the borough who were treated with dirty needles in their homeland and years later develop the disease.
"Nationalities particularly at risk here are Russians who came here from Asia, other Asians and those from the Middle East," he said.
Basu said that often the symptoms of the disease show themselves when the patient is at high risk of serious complications including the need for a liver transplant.
He urged patients exposed to the disease to have a blood test immediately and to avoid using a toothbrush or shaving razor of someone infected with hepatitis C.
Basu said that hepatitis C cases constituted a "global epidemic."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about four million Americans have chronic hepatitis C, the most common chronic blood-borne infection. They estimate that 20 percent of these patients develop cirrhosis and an additional two to three percent will get liver cancer. An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 die each year as a result of the disease.
