NORTH COUNTY: Workers at Tri-City, Palomar exposed to tuberculosis patient
Officials say risk of outbreak is very low
By DAVID GARRICK - Staff Writer | Monday, October 6, 2008 6:09 PM PDT ∞

Post your Comments Increase Font Decrease Font email this story print this story NORTH COUNTY ---- A man diagnosed with tuberculosis came into contact with a dozen medical workers and some patients at Tri-City Medical Center on Sept. 8, according to a Tri-City spokesman.

But medical officials said it was unlikely that the exposure was long enough to spread the potentially deadly lung disease.

The man also came into contact with three medical workers at Palomar Medical Center and two ambulance paramedics when he was transferred from Tri-City to Palomar later that day, said Joyce Agorrilla, Palomar's manager of infection control.

No patients at Palomar were exposed because the man was taken directly to a private room, Agorrilla said.

Tests already have determined that the Palomar employees do not have tuberculosis, hospital spokesman Andy Hoang said.

Officials from the ambulance company did not return phone calls Monday.

It won't be determined until November whether the 12 employees at Tri-City have contracted the disease, because the hospital uses a less advanced testing method.

Tri-City's method takes eight to 10 weeks, while Palomar's takes one to two days, officials said.

The man spent about 4 1/2 hours in the Tri-City emergency room Sept. 8, hospital spokesman Jeff Segall said.

Segall said he was unsure how many patients might have come into contact with the man, but that concern was low, because they would have had much less close contact with the man.

While he was in the emergency room, hospital personnel did not diagnose him with tuberculosis despite performing an examination and taking a chest X-ray.

Dr. Gene Ma, director of Tri-City Medical Group, said the patient's X-ray showed no signs of the infection.

"The preliminary diagnosis was that it looked like pneumonia," Ma said.

He said diagnosing tuberculosis requires a series of three tests and generally takes longer than the time the man spent at Tri-City.

The man was then transferred from Tri-City to Palomar at the request of Kaiser Permanente, his insurance provider.

Once at Palomar, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and warnings were issued to all medical personnel who came into contact with him, Hoang said.

The patient was in isolation during his stay at Palomar, which ended with a Sept. 28 discharge, Hoang said.

The typical symptoms of tuberculosis are a chronic cough, fever, night sweats, weight loss and coughing up blood.
According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, tuberculosis is usually spread through the air by sneezing or coughing.

A latent type of tuberculosis infection, when one shows no symptoms and does not feel sick, cannot be spread to others.

Jose Alvarez, a spokesman for the county's Health and Human Services Agency, said contracting tuberculosis typically takes eight to 16 hours of exposure to the disease.

Agorrilla, Palomar's infection control manager, said it usually takes many hours of exposure for someone to contract tuberculosis. She also said people can live in the same house with a tuberculosis patient and not get the disease.

Contact staff writer David Garrick at (760) 740-5468 or dgarrick@nctimes.com.
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