Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0262471 (ENT)
 5,307 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Recent developments in our understanding of prion diseases have raised concerns for the public health. There is now compelling evidence that the transmissible agent for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in affected individuals is accumulated in lymphoreticular tissues such as the appendix and tonsils. This agent demonstrates a remarkable resistance to standard methods of sterilisation used in hospital sterile services departments. The possible implications this has on the safety of surgical instruments in ENT and other surgical practice is discussed. This review also outlines the history of our understanding of prion diseases and describes the development of a diagnostic test for vCJD in the living patient by pharyngeal tonsil biopsy.
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PMID:Prions and the ENT surgeon. 1076 16

Single-use surgical instruments have been used in the UK's ENT departments. This is in response to guidelines issued by the Department of Health and the British Association of Otolaryngologists and Head and Neck Surgeons, in order to prevent the spread of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in a young population of patients undergoing routine adenotonsillectomy. In one institution we found that the new single-use instruments were inferior to previous standard kits and that postoperative haemorrhage rates had increased following children's tonsillectomy from 1.7% to 7.8% (p<0.01). Because of the increased reporting of complications following the use of single-use surgical instruments for adenotonsillectomies, ENT departments in the UK are no longer obliged to use these disposable instruments. This is due to the theoretical risk of prion infection being outweighed by the actual risk to the patient from increased postoperative haemorrhage.
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PMID:Prions and disposable surgical instruments. 1462 77