"Surgeon Questions Link Between Operation, AIDS"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Surgeon Questions Link Between Operation, AIDS"

Baltimore Sun (12/17/90), P. 1A
Baer, Susan

Abstract: Dr. William Knapper, senior surgeon at the operation during which Dr. Rudolph Almaraz is believed to have contracted HIV, said that at no point in his surgical career was there any accident-related risk of AIDS to him or his colleagues. Knapper, in a statement to the Sun, said he did not remember the specifics of the operation in question, nor did he remember Almaraz, who was a prominent breast cancer surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He did say that at no time was there an arterial blood spurt during a subcutaneous lymph node biopsy, as Almaraz's lawyer, Marvin Ellin, has said. Almaraz told Ellin before he died that he contracted HIV while assisting in just such a procedure on an AIDS patient at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. A Sloan-Kettering spokesperson said Almaraz had never filed an aaccident report of an arterial blood spurt. Ellin questioned Knapper's memory of the 1983 incident and said an arterial blood spurt would not necessarily be noted on an operating report.

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