FAYETTEVILLE, AR (WCMH) — Operating rooms at an Arkansas hospital were shut down until further notice due to a deadly brain disease.

A patient at Washington Regional Hospital was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a deadly degenerative brain condition.

“It leads to brain degeneration, people who would present with this would have symptoms of dementia, unsteadiness, they fall, and act as if they are dizzy,” said Gary Wheeler of the Arkansas Department of Health.

Hospital officials said the disease is not the variant condition known as “Mad Cow Disease.”

The disease is spread through contact with infected neurological tissue. “The only way that it’s transmitted or that we’ve documented that it’s transmitted is when you’re exposed to brain tissue from an infected individual,” Wheeler told KNWO-TV.

The operating rooms will remain shut down until hospital staff is able to sterilize and decontaminate the rooms and surgical instruments.

“In almost all situations, the risk is extremely low. We feel that the risk to the community whose been going to Washington Regional or any other hospital, would be very low.” Wheeler said.What others are clicking on: