More Should Be Done to Protect Surgical Patients From Intraoperative Hepatitis B Infection

Abstract

When do we, s a society, have the right or the duty to deny a person's right to work in a chosen profession? The article by Spijkerman et al. in this issue of Infection control and Hospital Epidemiology once again raises this question. The article reports that a surgeon was unresponsive to repeated attempts at hepatitis B vaccination, and then was infected with hepatitis B at least a decade before discovery through public health department investigations of symptomatic infections among some of his most recent patients. During the course of 4 years, the surgeon, unknowingly infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), appears to have transmitted HBV to 28 patients.