Newest EBOLA Fear. Hospitals told NOT to re-use expensive blood testing on more than one patient. WTF?

When physicians at the Nebraska Medical Center got their first Ebola case in September, they knew they'd rely heavily on sophisticated blood test machines to monitor the man's condition. They didn't expect the virus might leave the machines incapacitated for longer than the patient.

Several leading manufacturers of high-tech diagnostic devices have alerted hospital laboratories that they will restrict service, support and warranties for equipment used to test blood and organ functions for Ebola patients. Fearing infections, some decline to have their technicians perform tuning and maintenance the expensive devices often require. Others advise labs to quarantine the equipment after use on Ebola patients or even destroy it – a policy that one company's own CEO calls "the dumbest" approach imaginable.

Hospital officials, including some involved in treating the few U.S. patients who have gotten Ebola, see many of the restrictions as irrational. They cite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advises that devices used to test biological samples from Ebola patients can be disinfected and reused safely. They note that the same equipment has been used for years to test blood from patients with other infectious diseases, such as HIV and Hepatitis, and reused without problems.

"If this unfounded behavior continues, it could significantly impact the way hospitals care for these people," says Steven Hinrichs, chair of pathology and microbiology at the University of Nebraska and its affiliated hospital, which has treated two Ebola patients successfully. "These are good machines, we wanted to use them, but some (manufacturers) are saying you have to incinerate them if you do, so we had to find an alternative."


[link to www.usatoday.com]