Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON — Six months after worries about particulate matter on surgical equipment temporarily stopped surgeries at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Ann Arbor, a congresswoman said Friday that some of those same concerns are being raised again, with surgeries being moved or delayed.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, confirmed that she and U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, spoke to VA officials at the Ann Arbor facility after hearing of a delay from a veteran’s family and were told that “intermittent” problems with particulate matter being found on surgical equipment trays or cases continue.

Derek Atkinson, a spokesman for the facility, acknowledged for the Free Press that problems remain and that recently it has "experienced an intermittent recurrence of sterile micro-particulates in some instrument trays," leading to the cancellation of some surgeries, primarily cardiac surgeries and other procedures that require more more surgical trays.

Those more complex surgeries, he said, are being "proactively referred to the community ... at VA expense."

Concerns raised as surgeries resume at Ann Arbor VA

"The VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System’s operating room cancellation rate remains consistent with the national VA cancellation rate," Atkinson said, adding that numerous reviews and inspections have taken place since the issue first arose last year and that they have not identified any "quality of care issues."

He did not immediately answer a question, however, about the cause of the particulate matter and why, six months or longer after it first became an issue, officials at the facility have been unable to solve it.

Meanwhile, Dingell said she and Walberg plan to send hospital leaders another letter asking them to outline what is being done to fix the recurring problem and visit with officials in the near future to follow up on those questions.

“I know they’ve been working to fix the problem but not knowing what’s causing it is unacceptable,” said Dingell. “We have to give our veterans quality health care and we have to give the VA the resources it needs to fix the problem.”

As in the past, VA officials have made clear that at no point has patient safety been compromised.

Last November, the Free Press reported that as many as 59 surgeries had been moved to the U-M Medical Center and that an operating area of the VA hospital closed for several days because some surgical equipment trays contained tiny bits of sediment believed to have been linked to an earlier water main break.

No surgical tools themselves were contaminated in that earlier instance but particulate matter led to worries about maintaining a sterile surgical environment. For a time after that, the facility had its equipment sterilized at the Detroit facility and transported to Ann Arbor to ensure its quality before believing the problem had been fixed.

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.