3 Died from Possible Tainted Medical Scopes at Huntington Hospital

PASADENA, CA - At least three patients died last year at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena in an outbreak suspected to have been caused by tainted medical scopes, according to a newly discovered regulatory report cited by a newspaper Thursday.

Huntington hospital officials confirmed in August that three patients were sickened the previous month but declined to say more about their condition. They later told Olympus Corp., the scope’s manufacturer, of the deaths, according to the company’s report to federal regulators, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Hospital officials said this week they believed patient privacy laws prevented them from telling the public that the unnamed patients had died, according to The Times.

"What were those three families told?” asked Lawrence Muscarella, a medical safety expert who discovered the Pasadena outbreak in a report in a Food and Drug Administration database, according to The Times. "The new norm for hospitals appears to be silence.”

In an earlier similar outbreak at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, officials confirmed that patients had died.

--City News Service, photo courtesy Olympus Corp.