Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
Researchers said they didn't know how and when it happened, but they were sure "Patient I," an 18-year-old Treasure Coast, Fla., woman, got the virus from Acer.
According to the CDC's weekly morbidity and mortality report, the woman tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. Besides her visits to Acer, "She had no other confirmed exposures to HIV," the report says.
Acer died in 1990, a month after he took out a newspaper ad telling his patients he had AIDS and suggesting they get tested for HIV.
Five other patients apparently contracted the virus from Acer, the CDC said. Prominent among them was Kimberly Bergalis, the Fort Pierce, Fla., woman who spent the last months of her life on a crusade to require AIDS testing for health care workers. Bergalis died in 1991 at age 23.
Little information about "Patient I" was released Thursday. She will appear at a press conference in West Palm Beach today with her attorney, Robert Montgomery, who represented Bergalis and other Acer patients in successful litigation against Cigna, the insurance company that referred patients to Acer.
CDC researchers said they discovered "Patient I" was HIV-positive when she tried to join the military late last year and was tested for the virus. The woman told investigators she never had injected drugs, never had a blood transfusion and never had contracted a sexual disease.
Five of the six people she has had sex with were tested for HIV, and the results were negative, according to the CDC. Her sixth partner could not be found, but she told investigators she had used a condom with him.
The woman had her teeth cleaned and got fillings from Acer from 1987 to 1989. Acer didn't perform any invasive procedures on her, but used a needle to administer local anesthesia.
It isn't clear how the virus was transmitted from Acer to his patients, but there is little doubt that it happened because the viruses are closely related, said Dr. Harold Jaffe of the CDC. Aside from Acer, however, there are no confirmed cases of HIV transmission from a health care worker to a patient.
"I don't think this one additional case increases our understanding of this issue," Jaffe said. "Whatever happened with this particular practice is very unusual and is still a mystery."
About 1,100 of Acer's estimated 2,500 former patients have been tested for the virus, according to Stephen Kindland, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
"We'd like to get the word out to those former patients that if they have not been tested for HIV already, please do so," Kindland said.
Bergalis is the only Acer patient known to have died from AIDS. Barbara Webb, a schoolteacher who also contracted the virus from Acer, said Thursday "Patient I" called her when she got her test results back. Webb describes the woman as "a very bright, lovely person" who was looking for advice on how to handle the disease, the publicity and her family and friends.
"She asked the same questions that I asked Kimberly," Webb said. "She wanted to know what to do if somebody rejects her, if it's safe to hold somebody's hand. She knows it's safe, but she still needs to hear it."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB