Research Article

Hepatitis B Seroprevalance Among Health care Workers in a Tertiary Hospital

10.4274/Vhd.99609

  • Alper AKÇALI
  • Alper ŞENER
  • Müşerref TATMAN OTKUN
  • Semra AKGÖZ
  • Ali Metin OTKUN

Viral Hepat J 2013;19(1):36-40

Objective:

In this study it is aimed, to determine the seroprevalence of HBV in health care workers in our hospital and to determine the factors that affect the epidemiology of transmission.

Materials and Methods:

Serum samples were taken from those of the hospital employees between June 2009-June 2010 and a questionnaire was held. Samples were tested for HBsAg, antiHBs and antiHBc total with MEIA method with an autoanalyser.

Results:

The mean age of the study group was 30.9 (± 6.9) and 100 men, 156 women participated on a voluntary basis. Professions were grouped as, 95 doctors, 60 nurses, midwives, 26 technicians, 16 laboratory technicians, biologists, 13 nurses, 19 cleaners, 27 administrative and technical staff. 188 people under 10 years, and 68 people over ten years worked in the field of health care. In this study, 22 people found contacted with HBV (8.6%), 234 persons (91.4%) were not contacted with HBV, 166 of them (64.8%) were vaccinated. One person (0.4%) were positive for HBsAg. None of the nursing aides was vaccianted, 26.3% of cleaning workers were found to be vaccinated. According to the results of laboratory tests, among needle injured person in the last year, being vaccinated (25 persons, 89.3%) and to have prior infection (27 people, 96.4%) rates were significantly higher (p = 0.003). By multivariate multinomial logistic regression analysis to determine the factors that affect transmission of hepatitis B, none of the variables was observed as a significant factor (p> 0.05).

Conclusion:

HBsAg seroprevalence is very low compared to other studies in our hospital. Vaccination rate is high. However, nurses and cleaning personnel vaccination rate found particularly low. Considering that these services are carried out in health care settings by frequently changing personnel, training and vaccination of these individuals should be planned before starting the work. While needlestick and sharp injuries were seen mostly by people those previously infected or vaccinated, this suggest that these people must be trained and informed again about bloodborne infectious agents like HBV and others.

Keywords: Hepatitis B virus, seroprevalence, healthcare worker, risk factors

Full Text (Turkish)