Three patients infected with hepatitis C have been linked to a New York City anesthesiologist whom Health Department officials indicated may have infected scores of other patients.

Officials from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said they are contacting 4,500 patients who received intravenous anesthesia from the doctor in question during outpatient surgical procedures between December 2003 and May 2007.

Officials said they were notified in March of a patient who contracted the virus following a medical procedure in August 2006. Two other patients who also received intravenous anesthesia from the anesthesiologist in August 2006 also tested positive. Based on laboratory tests, officials said the viruses from all three patients suggested one source.

The anesthesiologist, who was not identified, did not have his licensed suspended, although he stopped working pending an investigation by the city and state health departments, officials said.

“Transmission of hepatitis in a medical setting is rare, but as a precaution we are reaching out to anyone who could have been potentially exposed,” the assistant commissioner for communicable disease at the city’s Health Department, Marci Layton, said.

Hepatitis C is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus. Spread by contact with infected blood, it causes jaundice and, ultimately, liver damage and cirrhosis. Patients who are infected have the virus for life.

A spokeswoman for the state Health Department, Claudia Hutton, said the anesthesiologist under investigation has been licensed since 1977 and does not have a history of spreading infection. “He has been cooperating,” she said.