Alberta Health Services has notified 35 patients who recently had procedures at the Peter Lougheed Centre after a problem was found with the endoscope washers used at the facility.

AHS says a problem was found in three of four specialized disinfection endoscope washers and that several small parts, which direct disinfection solution through the endoscopes, were missing.

The surgical scopes are hand washed in cleaning solution by technicians and are then placed in the washer for the final stage in the cleaning and disinfection process.

Officials say they became aware of the situation on December 2 and the three machines were immediately repaired.

They say that the risk to the patients who had gastrointestinal endoscopy procedures at the northeast hospital from November 28 to December 2 is extremely low.

All endoscopes were also cleaned again by hand and sent through the repaired disinfection washers and some procedures were postponed that day as a further precaution.

“We have rigorous quality and safety standards in place, and we’ll continue to investigate how this occurred,” said Dr. Belanger. “Despite following all manufacturer-recommended maintenance, as well as the additional weekly checks AHS has implemented, several small parts in the washers became dislodged. This was an unanticipated problem and one that will be addressed through changes we have made to our weekly safety checks of these machines.”

AHS says the situation has been investigated by provincial experts in infection prevention and control and they estimate the risk of blood-borne infection to be one in a million or less.

“Patient safety is always our uppermost concern. Although the risk of contracting a blood-borne illness such as Hepatitis B, C or HIV is extremely low, it is important to be transparent and offer this testing to these patients,” said Dr. Francois Belanger, Vice President and Medical Director, Central and Southern Alberta, Zone Medical Director, Calgary Zone. “We understand that this will be concerning to the patients and we will be working with them to explain the situation and offer testing and follow up care.”

AHS is only contacting those patients who were potentially exposed and says no other patients were affected.