Baystate Medical Center to notify between 1,500 and 1,800 cardiac surgery patients of potential infection risk

Between 1,500 and 1,800 cardiac surgery patients at Baystate Medical Center are being notified about a potential slow-growing infection risk from certain devices used during open-heart surgery.

The risk of the infection stems from a heater-cooler device, known as the Stockert 3T. The devices, used in many open-heart surgeries at hospitals nationwide including Baystate, may have been contaminated during manufacturing which could put patients at risk for life-threatening infections, warned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC advised hospitals and health care providers to identify and inform patients who might have been put at risk. Baystate Health spokesman Brendan Monahan said the hospital is in the process of identifying surgeries in which the device was used and notifying those patient within the next 10 days.

Procedures at the hospital using the Stocker 3T date back to 2012, Monahon said. As of this year, the hospital is no longer using the device due to possible risks.

Monahon said patients’ safety and quality care is always the “utmost concern.”

The Stockert 3T has been identified as the source of bacterial transmission at hospitals in both the United States and Europe. More that 250,000 heart bypass procedures using heater-cooler devices are performed in the United States every year, the CDC said. These units are an essential part of the surgeries because they keep a patient’s circulating blood and organs at a specific temperature during the procedure. About 60 percent of heart bypass procedures performed in the U.S. utilize the devices that have been associated with the infections.

CDC estimates that in hospitals where at least one infection has been identified, the risk of a patient getting an infection from the bacteria was between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000. Patients who had valves or prosthetic products implanted are at higher risk of these infections, the CDC said.

“No patients have come forward with symptoms of this infection,” Monahan said. However, he said the hospital is following the guidelines of the CDC and informing doctors on the symptoms associated with the infection.

The CDC advises patients to seek medical care if they experience such systems as night sweats, muscle aches, weight loss, fatigue or unexplained fever.

“While these infections can be severe, and some patients in this investigation have died, it is unclear whether the infection was a direct cause of death,” the CDC said.