Hepatitis B Surface Antigen Screening of Sur-gical Treatment Received Orthopaedics Patients

Hepatitis B infection is one of the major health problem and the risk of hepatitis releated disease ma-nifestation is higher around the world. There for he-alth releated personnel is under great risk if any pre-cautionary measures are not taken. In order to determine, a study was undertaken at the department of orthopaedics and traumatology from December 1992 to June 1994, how seriously health worker inc-luding doctors were exposed to-hepatitis B infection. All in patients were checked routinely for a hepatitis B surface antigene (HBsAg) carriage. During these 19 months pariod 685 patients were investigated. Among them 47 (%6.8) patients were HBsAg(+). Ho-wever these patients did not have clinical and la-boratory (biluribins, SGOT, SGPT etc) findings re-lated to hepatitis B. Fifty randomly selected discharged patients who were initially HBsAg(-) were recalled for follow up and checked for HBsAg positivity. Only one patient (%2) was HBsAg (+) si-milarly, this patient did not have clinical and la-boratory findings related to hepatits. This findings suggested that protective measures should be taken and necessary immunisation should be done for the health personnels in the cilinics.