'Hospital patient in CJD scare is a child'

However, because of patient confidentiality, bosses at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust said they could not comment on the report.

Until now it was assumed that the patients who underwent brain surgery at Middlesbrough General Hospital last summer were adults.

Last October, all of the patients were contacted by hospital officials and told that they had been exposed to the theoretical risk of catching Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. This followed a positive diagnosis in the case of a woman patient who was not suspected of having CJD.

Because doctors did not believe the woman had CJD the instruments used on her were sterilised and used on other patients.

National guidelines say that when a patient with suspected CJD is operated on, the instruments must be taken out of use until a diagnosis is made.

Experts fear that conventional sterilisation methods may fail to decontaminate instruments used on CJD patients.

Last week, the South Tees trust was cleared of any breach of national brain surgery guidelines following a report by Dr Bill Kirkup, North-East Regional Director of Health.