Tests Link Chesapeake Nurse to TB Cases

BY KATRICE HARDY

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

Tests that were returned this week to state health officials have confirmed that two local cases of active tuberculosis were contracted from a nurse who died of the disease during the summer.

Chesapeake Health Director Nancy Welch said Thursday that tests to establish if there was a link between the nurse and the two TB cases were conducted by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results proved that the strand of tuberculosis the nurse had was the same form found in a Chesapeake General Hospital co-worker and patient.

The co-worker is doing fine, Welch said. The tuberculosis was caught early and was not yet contagious, she said.

The patient, an elderly woman, died during the spring. Her death was due to other health complications, Welch said. But before she died, health practitioners discovered she had active TB.

They also learned that the elderly woman had been cared for last fall at Chesapeake General by Deborah Byrd Chrysostomides, the nurse who died. The care occurred during a time when the nurse was likely contagious with TB, Welch said.

Health officials, citing privacy laws, have declined to identify any of the people who developed active TB. The Virginian-Pilot learned Chrysostomides identity through other sources after she died in June.

Welch said the three active cases were remarkably few, given the potential for the diseases spread.

To have this limited number of active cases is phenomenal, she said, crediting a massive testing effort for helping keep the disease in check. Officials screened about 2,500 people after Chrysostomides died.

The nurse had worked at Chesapeake General from November 2000 to April 2004. Through interviews with family members, friends and co- workers, health officials were able to determine that Chrysostomides likely was working with the contagious form of TB from July 2003 to April.

They also learned that her last TB test, given by hospital officials each year to medical practitioners, was negative.

In letters and phone calls, health officials urged patients who had stayed in an inpatient medical surgery unit from July 2003 to April at Chesapeake General to receive free TB testing in clinics set up in the city.

Health officials also screened visitors and hospital associates who had contact with the patients of the Chesapeake General 2 East surgical unit for extended periods of time.

Of the 2,500 people screened, 128 people were found to have the latent form of TB. Although that form is not contagious, it can develop into active and contagious TB if a persons immune system weakens.

Welch and other health officials are still trying to find out how Chrysostomides contracted tuberculosis.

n Reach Katrice Hardy at 222-5857 or katrice.franklin@pilotonline.com.