Six more hospitals in Quebec have sent out advisories to former heart surgery patients that they are at risk of developing an infection caused by a medical device which may have been contaminated by a bacteria.
Last week the Montreal Heart Institute announced that two of 8500 patients who had undergone open-heart surgery since 2011 had developed an infection from a heater-cooler system that had become contaminated during the manufacturing process in Germany.
The Journal de Montreal says the MUHC, CHUM and Sainte-Justine children's hospital in Montreal as well as the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec - Université Laval, the University Institute of cardiology and pneumology of Quebec and the Chicoutimi Hospital have sent out notices to more than 23,000 former patients advising them of the risk of infection.
The U-S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States estimates the risk of infection is less than 1%.