The Moncton Hospital (Photo TDCB)
Horizon Health has confirmed two separate cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in patients who had cataract surgery.
Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Moncton Hospital Dr. Gordon Dow says it is a rare degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia, and it occurs at a rate of one in a million people, “We had a patient who lives in Moncton, who was admitted to our hospital in December, who was subsequently diagnosed by one of our neurologists with CJD. What is even more rare, within six weeks, we identified a second case of CJD. Both of these patients had undergone cataract surgery, weeks before their diagnosis of CJD was made.”
Dr. Dow says the two cases are completely unrelated, and patients who received the same procedure in the following weeks, have no risk of contracting the condition.
Horizon notified 103 patients of the risk by letter upon discovering the first case of CJD on January 15, 2019. We notified an additional 601 patients on February 14,2019 following the discovery of the second probable case.
Patients were encouraged to call Horizon to speak with either their ophthalmologist or a member of Horizon’s team. We can confirm that 43 patients contacted Horizon to learn more about their potential risk.
The transmission of CJD by surgical instruments has only been documented on seven occasions worldwide, occurring more than 20-40 years ago, and none of the CJD cases have been linked to cataract surgery.
“We can very, very solidly say there is no linkage between CJD and the instruments used during surgery. The reason we know this, is our second case had already developed the early signs of CJD before their surgery, and was diagnosed with full blown CJD soon after their surgery,” Dr. Dow says.
Due to the rarity of having two separate CJD cases identified, we have disclosed this information to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
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