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Reginald F. Finger, MD, MPH; John M. Kobayashi, MD, MPH
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services Seattle

JAMA. 1985;254(6):753.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

Lange and Kreider have suggested that even though the risk of hepatitis B virus infection in rural health care workers is low, vaccination of those with frequent blood exposure should be recommended because the relative risk of such exposure is increased threefold. In our study, when those workers who had ever lived in a city were excluded, that relative risk disappeared (see Table, column 2). The risk of HBV infection in all blood exposure groups was low (overall, 2.1%). This figure is comparable with the background prevalence in rural areas cited by Lange and Kreider (1.9%). This suggests that the relative risk in high-blood-exposure groups, among rural health workers, comes not from their work-place exposure in the rural hospital but from some source in the cities in which many previously lived.

To withhold publication of the data, or to make a recommendation inconsistent with the data, simply in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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