Fear Of Getting Hep C After Sharing Pipe

Posted on Tue, 5 Jun 2012

Question: Dr,
I posted this a day ago to Dr HHH and he said it was extremely low risk. I just want one more opinion. I was drunk in Vegas and shared a pipe for meth with an escort. I did nothing sexual and did not even take off my clothes. I have no reason why I did this as I only have smoked pot before in my life. Now I am losing sleep over possibly getting Hep C. I have read her blood could have mixed with my blood from the pipe in our mouths. I did not use IV drugs at all or ever. I dont think she ever has but really dont know for sure. How common is what I did for spreading the disease? She said she was disease free but she might not know about Hep C, right? Let me know how worried I should be over this encounter. Everything I read online says it can be transmitted that way. Thank you so much in advance.

Answered by Dr. Vaibhav Banait (16 hours later)

Hi

I can understand your concern. "The risk of transmission of hepatitis c through even sex is very less".

Sharing pipe is extremely unlikely to spread the disease . If you go by 'Slesseinger and Fordtran's textbook of gastroenterology', even the use of condoms are not recommended in monogamous relationship if one partner is positive. This should be reassuring.

Anyway I would suggest 'HCV RNA Pcr test' after three weeks and HCV elisa after four to six months . This should rule out hepatitis c definitely and will clear any questions beyond doubt about you being infected.

Regards,
Vaibhav Banait

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Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Prasad