Chances of catching hepatitis C and HIV from blood transfusion now?

My sister has been ill this year. Had surgery in Aug 06 and received 2 units of blood. Has now been diagnosed with Hep C and is being tested for HIV. Dr thinks she got it from the blood transfusions. Other causes are pretty much ruled out. (She is in a monogomous relationship and does not do drugs.) I thought they tested blood for these things. Is it possible that the test missed these things?

Hepatitis C is the most common cause of transfusion-related hepatitis. In recent years about 30,000 new cases occur each year in the US, despite VERY rigorous testing of blood and equally rigorous criteria restricting who can and who cannot donate blood. The reason hepatitis C continues to be a transfusion risk is that some patients who donate blood are infected and don't know it, and they have no history of illness to suggest prior infection because many cases of hepatitis C infection produce no symptoms at the time of infection. But most important, these "silent" infected patients cannot be detected by any know test. Source(s): I am a professor of pathology at a US medical school.

Blood is tested for them but like all things, human error can intervene.
Statisically the chances must be very small...I wish your sister well...;
It's possible but unlikely. There is not a zero chance but the blood has been tested thoroughly for last 11 years. It's possible the donor had it recently however. The test is not 100 percent but it remains unlikely. (The current estimate is 1 in 103,000.)
http://www.wcredcross.org/bloodmobile/qa...
I Think Donated Blood is Routinely Tested for These Organisms, it was Not Always So.
I am sorry about your sister. I will pray for her health and pray she has none of the other diseases she is being tested for.

Nowadays the risk of catching hepatitis C from a blood transfusion is extremely low, because blood banks now screen all donated blood. As with hepatitis B it is possible to be a symptom-free carrier of the virus. Hepatitis B sufferers in the acute stage of infection and all hepatitis C patients should consider themselves infectious.
What causes Hepatitis?
It can be caused by excessive alcohol, toxic chemicals, incorrect diet, some drugs such as paracetamol, autoimmune diseases, poisons, non-viral infections like Q fever, and various viral infections including glandular fever as well as some diseases of the biliary system and viral infections. Viruses, which attack liver cells, are known as hepatitis A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Other viruses of both new and old varieties can also attack the liver such as Epstein Barr virus (glandular fever virus) and the cocksackie virus. http://www.liverdoctor.com/section4/hepa...

They do have a case where a guy did get HIV through blood donation even after 1987. That is scary....!!!! It was in 2002.
Donated blood in the U.S. has been screened for HIV antibodies since 1987. However, HIV antibodies only show up in a person's blood several weeks -- or even months -- after infection. A new test that looks for traces of the AIDS virus itself has been used since 1999 to cut down this window of vulnerability. But even the new test can't eliminate all risk.

The most likely possibility is that the donor gave blood before enough HIV had built up in his blood for even this very sensitive test to pick up the infection.

Even so, the U.S. blood supply remains safe, say officials at the CDC, the FDA, and the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB).

"The blood supply is extremely safe. There is a risk, but it is quite rare for this to happen," CDC spokeswoman Kathryn Bina tells WebMD.

The AABB says the risk of getting HIV from a blood transfusion is about one in 2 million.

"We strongly believe the blood supply is the safest it has ever been," an AABB spokeswoman tells WebMD. "In order to ensure the highest degree of safety, the blood-banking and transfusion community continues to implement safety advances. However, even with the most advanced technology available, there are still very minimal risks associated with transfusion."

Is the risk worth it?

"The important thing people need to remember is that for any patient who needs a blood transfusion, the risk of not receiving blood far outweighs the risk of getting HIV," an FDA spokeswoman tells WebMD.

Blood donation centers don't rely only on testing blood. They also ask donors a series of questions about their HIV risk. People whose behavior puts them at risk of HIV infection are not allowed to donate blood.

The infected blood given to the Texas man came from a donor who didn't think he was at risk of HIV. According to an Associated Press report, he is a heterosexual man. The man donated blood four times during 2000. At the time of his last donation, tests showed that the blood carried HIV. This prompted intensive testing of samples from all of his previous donations -- including the blood given to the Texas man, which carried small amounts of the AIDS virus.http://www.webmd.com/content/article/16/...