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Heart surgery patients warned they may be infected

Last Updated Dec 1, 2016 at 1:47 pm MDT

Alberta Health Services is notifying about 11,500 patients that they may have been exposed to an infection during open-heart surgery.

Officials say Health Canada has reported that a device used to heat and cool blood during surgery has been linked to mycobacteria.

Alberta Health Services says it has used the device at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, as well as at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute and the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.

The agency says no infections have been identified so far and Dr. Mark Joffe says the risk of getting an infection is very low, but patients should look out for symptoms.

“They would develop a fever, and its not fever that’s just a day or two it would begin and continue and be ongoing, weight loss that was unplanned, as well as regular drenching night sweats.”

Anyone who has had open-heart surgery in the last five years and is experiencing these symptoms should contact Health Link, or their cardiologist.

Letters are to be mailed in the coming days to doctors and discharged cardiac patients who may have been exposed.

In October, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority took a similar precaution and sent letters to more than 4,300 adults who have had heart surgery at the St. Boniface Hospital in the last four years.