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A North Carolina hospital has warned 18 brain surgery patients that they may have been exposed to a deadly disease during their surgeries, after a fellow surgical patient with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was diagnosed. The disease, which is always fatal, causes rapidly progressing dementia and is similar to 'mad cow' disease. The hospital sterilized equipment between cases, but the CDC requires more stringent sterilization following potential exposures to the disease.

(AP Photo/Scott Quintard)

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Officials at a North Carolina hospital notified 18 patients Tuesday that they may have been exposed to the rare, degenerative brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob, which is always fatal and characterized by rapidly progressive dementia. The disease, which can in rare cases be transmitted by contact with infected tissue, is in the same class as 'mad cow' disease.



The patients all underwent brain surgery at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center since Jan. 18, when another patient who was treated there subsequently tested positive for the disease. The surgical instruments used on the patient with Creutzfeldt-Jakob were sterilized, but were "not subjected to enhanced sterilization procedures necessary on instruments used in confirmed or suspected cases of CJD," according to the release.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, affects about 200 people in the United States every year and about one in one million people a year worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is a part of a group of human and animal diseases with similar symptoms and characteristics, a group that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or 'mad cow' disease.



Though CJD can be caused by exposure to infected tissue, it is rarely transmitted this way; fewer than 1 percent of cases have been 'acquired,' according to the NIH. Most arise spontaneously or are hereditary.

The North Carolina case is only the most recent of several similar incidents over the past two years.

In August 2013, a New Hampshire hospital warned eight of its patients that they had potentially been exposed to the disease in a similar fashion after a patient died of suspected CJD. A September autopsy confirmed the presence of the disease, according to FoxNews. Five other patients in Massachusetts were notified of their risk because the equipment had been rented to another facility in that state, FoxNews reported.

In 2012, Greenville Health System in South Carolina had a similar case and had to warn 11 patients of their potential exposure to the disease. The health system has since increased the sterilization temperature for all instruments used during its brain surgeries, as a precaution.