Contaminated needles are any medical needles that have previously been used to administer medicine or vaccines to a patient or to draw blood from a patient. Once a needle has been used, standard procedure is to discard of it in biohazard waste. This prevents it from being reused.
Needles cannot be reused for several reasons. The most common reason is that needles come in direct contact with an individual's blood, regardless of whether the needle is attached to a syringe or to an intravenous device.
Once a needle touches the blood, it picks up traces of that blood. In other words, the needle becomes contaminated. Even though the blood is usually sterile, this is problematic for several reasons. When a needle is withdrawn from the body, the blood with which it is contaminated may attract pathogens.
Even more troublesome is that some individuals do not have sterile blood; some individuals suffer from blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis. A needle infected with tainted blood may transmit the illness to another individual if not properly discarded.
For these reasons, medical professionals are supposed to keep track of the needles that they use and discard of them immediately to reduce the risk of reuse. Unfortunately, this does not always happen because of negligence.
Some medical providers may fail to discard of their used needles while others may misplace them, putting them among clean needles. In other cases, needles may be mishandled, and a medical professional may inadvertently poke a patient with a contaminated needle.
Regardless of how it happens, contaminated needle use may make an individual entitled to financial compensation. This usually only holds true when the individual contracts an infection and can prove that a medical provider was responsible.
For more information about holding healthcare professionals accountable for contaminated needle use, discuss your case with the Pennsylvania medical malpractice attorneys of Lowenthal & Abrams, P.C.
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