Friday, Apr. 19, 1963
Bowery Blood?
The patient, a 40-year-old businessman, had rheumatic heart disease. The condition called for one of the most radical and dangerous feats of modern surgery. In an operating room at Manhattan's New York Hospital, a team of surgeons laid the ailing heart bare. While it was being repaired, the patient required transfusion of no fewer than 23 pints of blood. After nearly three weeks, he seemed to be recovering. But then, mysteriously, his temperature shot up to almost 105DEG F. Tests showed him to be infected by Plasmodium jalciparum, the bug that causes malignant malaria.
In the U.S., overt cases of malaria are a rarity. Rarer still are cases of the so-called malignant form. Rarest of all is a life-threatening case of malignant malaria contracted by a patient while undergoing treatment in one of the nation's major hospitals.
Doctors everywhere know that malaria is easily transmitted by transfusion, so well-run blood banks, like New York Hospital's, take every precaution in accepting donors. Trouble is, the hospitals often have to buy blood from commercial banks. Since the malaria parasites hide in blood cells at different times in their complex life cycle, and are then very difficult to detect, blood banks usually take their donors' word that they have never had malaria. In some cases, though, a donor's word is far from reliable.
Last week medical detectives were carrying on an intensive campaign to find the donor who was carrying the uncommon jalciparum malaria parasites. Although the patient he infected has recovered after proper treatment, the blood donor himself may die if he is not treated in time, or infect other persons with additional transfusions. Of the 23 pints used at New York Hospital, 19 had come from regular hospital donors--medical students, nurses, technicians and outside contributors. All were tested and found free from malaria, as was one commercial donor. The three others could not be found at the addresses they had given. One of those addresses was on Manhattan's traditional Skid Row, the Bowery.
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