Needle-Stick Injuries during the Care of Patients with AIDS

Abstract

To the Editor: On the basis of the best available epidemiologic evidence to date, it is highly probable that AIDS is a communicable disease spread by intimate sexual contact or by exposure to infected blood or blood products.¹ Since intravenous-drug abusers are the second most involved group after homosexual or bisexual men, it is likely that transmission can also occur by needle-stick exposure to even small quantities of blood or serum. The risk to health-care personnel of acquiring AIDS after needle-stick injury is unknown but may well be rather low, since no hospital workers have yet been reported to have . . .