Breastmilk Exposure in Eye

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Specializes in NICU.

I'm freaking out and need some information on people who have had a bodily fluid exposure. Today I had breastmilk splash in my eye. I'm still waiting on mother of baby to come in and get tested, but her labs drawn in Aug and Last week were negative. I'm still freaking out. I initially almost totally lost it because the note in the admit summary said positive for HIV and nobody passed it on. Come to find out the NP accidentally marked it HIV positive mom, but it was a mistake. She fixed it in the computer but never printed out a new sheet and the Doc never signed the new sheet to replace in the chart. So for 3 hours I thought mom was HIV positive and was freaking the F out!!

I breastfeed my daughter and the infectious disease doc from house sup called said he doubts it would be in breastmilk and even if she were positive it wouldn't convert yet.

Today is a holiday so I'm waiting to hear from Employee Health tomorrow on when to get retested etc. Do I stop breastfeeding my daughter? I'm so upset about this!! I worked so hard in breastfeeding her and to have it come to an end because of something like this. I did wash my eye out about 10 min after it happened and got labs drawn.

Has anyone had something similar happen?? Can you tell me about it? What about breastfeeding?

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Specializes in Cardiovascular Stepdown.

I'm really sorry that this happened to you and that you are experiencing so much stress for yourself and your baby. I have had a similar situation.

I was once splashed in the face and eyes (thankfully I had on a facemask, so not the mouth) with urine. The patient was MRSA and ESBL positive in his urine. I was freaking out too!

I did not even try to get to an eyewash station... I ran right to his bathroom and flushed my eyes out for about 10 minutes, then went to the eyewash station, flushed some more, then went to the ER.

They drew blood, wrote up a worker's comp form. They did not swab my eye or anything. I was really worried.

I did talk to an ID MD who I really trusted, and he assured me that the eyes are very good at protecting themselves and that there was almost no chance that I would get an infection from it. And he was right, I didn't. It was about 2 years ago.

For you, HIV is more scary, especially while breastfeeding. I understand your panic. I'm no expert on this, but I think you will be OK. I know that you will not really feel safe until you get the results.

You're in my thoughts... try to keep the panic as controlled as you can. I would call my pediatrician and ask about breastfeeding until you get the all-clear, just to be safe.

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Specializes in NICU.

Thank you so much for responding back! Employee Health talked to me today and said everything so far looks clear. They are just waiting back to see the mother's Hep C status so I won't know until tomorrow. They said if she is all clear, I won't need to come back for serial testing, just this once and done.

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Specializes in OB.

I would honestly try to relax. The chances of the mom having something unknown and infectious, let alone something you could contract through that splash, are so unbelievable small. I would definitely not stop breastfeeding your daughter. Hope you get all the reassuring results soon.

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From this CDC paper: "Human breast milk has been implicated in perinatal transmission of HIV, and HBsAg has been found in the milk of mothers infected with HBV (10,13). However, occupational exposure to human breast milk has not been implicated in the transmission of HIV nor HBV infection to health-care workers. Moreover, the health-care worker will not have the same type of intensive exposure to breast milk as the nursing neonate. Whereas universal precautions do not apply to human breast milk, gloves may be worn by health-care workers in situations where exposures to breast milk might be frequent, for example, in breast milk banking."

You might also be interested in this link: What to Do if an Infant or Child Is Mistakenly Fed Another Woman's Expressed Breast Milk. Just for perspective, consider how much more milk a baby is exposed to after being given a full feeding of expressed milk, and the odds of transmission are considered to be barely existent from that exposure.

There is no evidence that Hep B or C is transmitted through milk. Moms with Hep B and C are advised to breastfeed their babies if they want (although caution is advised if there is blood involved). Link: Hepatitis B or C Infections: Mothers with Hepatitis B or C infections can breastfeed their infants.

If you were to catch anything from this kind of exposure it would be so remarkable that you would probably have case studies published in journals about you.

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Sorry this happened to you....

But even if the mom was HIV positive the chances of it being transmitted to you is very very low.

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On 10/15/2019 at 4:28 PM, ilovenicu16 said:

Thank you so much for responding back! Employee Health talked to me today and said everything so far looks clear. They are just waiting back to see the mother's Hep C status so I won't know until tomorrow. They said if she is all clear, I won't need to come back for serial testing, just this once and done.

What does the ID doc say about re-testing?

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Specializes in NICU.

I'm not sure, the employee health nurse who handles exposure situations said if the source is clear on blood work, then there is no need for retesting? She came back clear of everything so she said I'm clear too.

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Specializes in NICU.

and the ID Doc said it would highly unlikely I would get anything back when we all thought she was positive for HIV. He didn't mention anything about the course of action but said he would think it would be ok to continue breastfeeding

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