Hepatitis Forums
Hepatitis C Prevention, Transmission and Testing => Am I Infected? => Topic started by: Bakerbritney43 on October 15, 2019, 10:14:26 am
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I was at a dinner party last night and when I sat down in chair, I felt a poke. I didn’t think too much of it, just shifted my position. It was a dining table chair with an upholstered seat. When I got home, I realized that I had two small holes in the rear of my leggings. Still didn’t think anything of it. But this morning it dawned on me that if someone else had sat in that chair before me and gotten pricked by whatever it was, that could potentially be a problem for diseases. I tried to look at my bottom, which is not an easy area for me to see on my own… Ha! I didn’t see anything, but that means nothing. Because I really can’t tell. Anyway, should I be concerned?
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I’m sorry, this seems to have posted twice and I don’t know how to delete one! :-(
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OK so first off only about less than 4% of the US population has hep c. So the odds of randomly encountering someone with hep c is relatively low. Hep c is a blood borne virus meaning blood from an infected person must enter the blood stream of an uninfected person. So someone with hep c would have to been at your dinner party, sat in that chair, been cut deeply enough to draw blood and then that blood would have to enter your blood stream so you would need to be cut deeply enough to draw blood.
So that already seems to be a very low probability event. Add to that if a healthcare worker should experience an accidental needlestick involving a patient with known hepatitis see the odds of transmission in that situation are only about 1.8%.
So you are asking about the very low probability of an exceedingly low probability scenario.
Long story short, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over this.
I’ll delete your duplicate post