HIV Transmission from Surgeons and Dentists to Patients: Can Models Predict the Risk?

Abstract

acquiring H1V infection in the operating room or the dentist's chair? Analysis of related data and public sentiment suggest this model will provide limited reassurance; however, it cannot explain a critical event: the clustering of HIV transmission from a Florida dentist to six patients. Since the early days of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) era, this disease has engendered intense anxiety (some have described it as near-hysteria) in the general population. As more was learned about HIV and its transmission, the general public came to understand that, with the exception of infants born to infected mothers, individuals became infected with HIV only by sexual intercourse with an infected person, intravenous drug use, or transfusion of contaminated blood products. Gradually, it became accepted that acquisition of infection did not occur through casual contact with infected persons2; the public was reassured that sharing an office, a taxi, a classroom, or a dormitory room with an HIV-infected person did not pose a risk. Even the chance of acquiring HIV infection from transfused blood products became increasingly remote as blood donor sources were limited to low-risk populations, routine screening of blood for HIV antibodies became standard, and opportunities for directed donations became more widely available. Thus, as information about routes of HIV transmission was disseminated to the public, a more calm and rational approach to AIDS emerged.2 In 1990, the Centers for Disease Control announced that a dentist with AIDS had transmitted