An assessment of hepatitis C virus infection among health-care workers of the National Cancer Institute of Naples, Southern Italy.

Background: As many people with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are asymptomatic, HCV infection could spread easily among the health-care workers of the National Cancer Institute of Naples (especially before the identification of HCV and in the absence of good, effective preventative measures, e.g. sterile syringe use, gloves, protective glasses).

Methods: In order to determine whether there is a transmission risk for HCV infection from patient to health-care worker, we carried out a cross-sectional study of a cohort of National Cancer Institute health-care workers in Naples, Southern Italy.

Results: The chi2-test was not significant; we did not find any significant risk for HCV in the 'other untrained staff' group [odds ratio (OR) 2.2; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.4-10.9] or in the health-care workers group (OR 1.6; 95% CI 0.4-7.0). In the health-care worker subgroups, doctors were the reference category because of the low prevalence of HCV in this subgroup (3.3%). A non-significant association was found in the professional nurses group (OR 2.7; 95% CI 0.8-8.8), as well as in the categories of technicians and biologists.

Conclusions: No excessive risk was found among the health-care workers as a whole or among the different categories of personnel, confirming that health-care employees have benefited sufficiently from preventative measures.