Florida- A Pensacola, Fla., woman may have contracted HIV from bone tissue she received as part of a routine surgery, her lawyers allege.
The 65-year-old woman, who asked to remain anonymous, had cervical fusion surgery, where doctors implanted a bone graft into her neck, last March at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola.
The woman, who has been married over 30 years, believes she contracted HIV from bone tissue that was illegally harvested from corpses and sold to hospitals around the country. She is now planning a lawsuit.
"She's such a low-risk category, and without going into details, it's very unlikely it came from any other source," said Dr. Timothy Brooks, the medical director of Michles and Booth, a medical malpractice law firm.
The tissue the woman received was harvested by a company in New Jersey called Biomedical Tissue Services. That company is now being investigated for allegedly stealing tissue from corpses at a New York funeral home - skipping the mandatory disease-screening process - then sending it onto a company called Regeneration Technologies for cleaning.
Biomedical Tissue Services' owner, Michael Mastromarino, and three other people have pleaded not guilty to charges of enterprise corruption, body stealing and opening graves, forgery and unlawful dissection.
From there, some of the material went to Medtronic, a large distributor of such tissue. Medtronic treated and processed the tissue and then sold it to Sacred Heart Hospital.
In October, the Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of certain bone, skin and ligament tissue that may have passed through certain companies.
And then this January, the woman's neurosurgeon sent her a letter notifying her some of that tissue may have been used in her surgery.
The woman has since received three blood tests, all paid for by Medtronic. She tested positive for HIV on the first test, negative on the second and is still awaiting the results of a third test.
Her attorney Marcus Michles said, "What we do know at this point is, that after complying with all of their requirements, she has tested positive for HIV, and that is a dramatic and unique problem right now."
In its recall announcement, the FDA stated that while it believes the risks from these tissues are low because of the processing methods they undergo, the actual risk of infection is unknown.
It's unknown how many other local implant patients may have received this tissue, but another Florida woman, 43-year-old Kay Phelps, is suing another company, Tutogen Medical Inc., that received tissue and bone from Biomedical Tissues Services.
Phelps had surgery to replace a bone in her face; she has twice tested negative for HIV.
The body-parts harvesting scandal has hit other parts of the country, including Oklahoma and Indianapolis, where patients have been notified that they may have received stolen tissue or bone.
