Consequences of the multipatient use of a single-patient capillary blood sampling device (CBSD)

Results Of 280 exposed patients, 9 had died without suspicion of blood-borne infection, 3 could not be tested, and 5 declined investigations. Among the 263 (93%) tested patients, 218 (83%) had negative results. We confirmed a known history of HCV infection in 6 patients (1 coinfected by HIV), and also identified resolved HBV infection in 37 patients, of whom 18 were already known. 2 patients were found to have a previously unknown HCV infection. According to the time elapsed from the closest previous visit of a HCV-infected potential source patient, we could rule out nosocomial transmission in one case (14 weeks) but not in the other (1 day). In the latter, however, transmission was deemed very unlikely by 2 reference centers based on the sequences of the E1 and HVR1 regions of the virus.