Chickenpox in Apparently ‘Immune’ Hospital Workers

To the Editor:Chickenpox is a fairly innocuous infection in the young, but it can be serious, even life-threatening, in adults.This is especially true of hospitalized patients who are immune-suppressed for any reason, including the stress of a serious illness.In order to prevent transmission of the varicellazoster virus to patients, it is usually necessary to furlough susceptible hospital employees who have been exposed to chickenpox or disseminated zoster for the duration of the risk period-ten to 21 days after their exposure.Because of the profound economic, health and staffing implications of furloughing, we, like most others, depend heavily on testing to determine immune status.Winthrop-University Hospital is a 530-bed university-affiliated hospital with 3,000 employees and ten to 13 chickenpox exposures annually among hospital personnel.Our experience that a positive or negative history of chickenpox is not a reliable way to determine immunity or susceptibility to chickenpox has been in agreement with the 1iterature.lTherefore, shortly &er commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) tests became available, we began routine