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Surgical Tools to Include RFID

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-just-remember-to-use-the-wand dept.

andrewman327 writes "Reuters is reporting that hospitals are considering embedding RFID tags in surgical tools to prevent leaving them in patients. After closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside. The biggest current stumbling block is the chip's size, though scientists hope they will continue shrinking as the state of the art advances."

41 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. A better idea... by KingSkippus · · Score: 5, Funny
    After closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside.

    I have a better idea.

    Before closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside.

    The timing would be a little better, don't you think?

    1. Re:A better idea... by 955301 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You'd think; however, the doctor needs tools to close you back up. If one of these tools is lost during the process and after the check, we're back to the same problem.

      --
      You are checking your backups, aren't you?
    2. Re:A better idea... by hob42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This sounds like a fantastic idea, but it's likely it'd never be anything but fantasy.

      My hospital just got around to putting computers in the operating rooms, and it'll be another couple years before we're acutally using them for charting and get rid of all the dead trees.

      Something this flashy (read: expensive) for a (supposedly) rare occurance isn't gonna fly in today's hospital. Actually, I don't see anywhere but grant-funded specialty hospitals using RFID for counts. Now, I can see RFIDs in instruments being used to streamline the cleaning/processing/sterilization process - take a basin full of instruments, wave them one by one under the wand, and sort them into the proper sets. That could hold some promise and might get the process of getting it into the OR started.

    3. Re:A better idea... by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 2, Funny

      That would explain why WalMart keeps trying to charge me $59.95 for a hemostat every time I shop there.

    4. Re:A better idea... by scottv67 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But hospitals aren't going to go for something this elaborate and expensive for patient safety alone.

      Riiiight. What is cheaper? Implementing this system to make sure no surgical implements are left inside a patient or paying a MEGA lawsuit when something is left inside a patient (and the resulting negative publicity in the local press)?

      Also, we (I work in healthcare) are seeing a bigger push for an asset tracking system that would be able to instantly display the location of certain "assets" that like to disappear in the hospital. Not stuff that is being stolen but items that are taken to a room and used and the next person who wants to use that device can not find it. An example would be: "Show me the current location of all of our infusion pumps."

      The assets we want to track would have a small tag attached. A wireless (not necessarily 802.11) infrastructure would be able to use triangulation to determine the location of devices and display them on a floor plan. The bigger shops already have this. Implementing this service is on our To Do list.

      Things that A) improve patient safety or B) save us money stand a very strong chance of getting implemented.

    5. Re:A better idea... by teledyne · · Score: 2, Funny

      Doctor: "Okay... time to check if we left any tools inside. I will need the RFID scanner."

      Nurse: "Uh... I can't find it."

      Doctor: "What? Oh shit..."

  2. What Happens... by dduardo · · Score: 5, Funny

    What happens if they forget the reciever inside the person?

    Doctor: Nurse, hand me the wand.
    Nurse: Don't know where it is.
    Doctor: Oh well, I'm sure I didn't leave anything inside.

  3. Yea but... by gasmonso · · Score: 3, Informative

    What if the hospital forgets to put the RFID chip in the instrument in the first place. It all comes down to accountability. Just count the damn tools before and after surgery. Seems simple to me. If there was a pliers before you started, then there should probably be one after you're done.

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
  4. Or maybe? by elzurawka · · Score: 2, Insightful

    they should use this
    if size matter, u cant been the size of Tomato Seed. All the tools could be put down on a sensor pad, and it could tell if everything has been returned, or have a running list of what is not on the pad ATM.

    --
    -EL
  5. My Dog by lbmouse · · Score: 3, Funny

    My dog has a very small RFID that I had the Vet intentional leave in him (name, address & phone number)... now my dog is suing me for violating his rights for privacy.

  6. How common is this problem... by dudeX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that we have to have use technology to prevent this from happening?
    Why would surgeons (or assistants) think it's okay to leave a foreign object lying on top of an organ or tissue in the first place?! Also why is the surgeon in such a rush that s/he would be so sloppy?

    Maybe this would be more appropiate for battlefield sitautions where things can get hairy, but then again, it's pretty rare to do open surgery in the battlefield!

    1. Re:How common is this problem... by Mikeeee84 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Around 1 in every 10,000 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/rfid_surge ry_debris/.

    2. Re:How common is this problem... by LunaticTippy · · Score: 4, Interesting
      It sounds as if you're unaware that US hospitals are in a state of absolute crisis. It isn't the surgeon's fault, and it isn't their choice. They are forced to work back-to-back 14 hour shifts. Emergency rooms are having their budgets slashed, having increased business from uninsured patients who can't afford routine care, and have trouble keeping staff from the abysmal working conditions and low pay.

      Here is a good article on the subject. It claims the ER system is on the verge of collapse.

      Hardly thinking it's okay to make mistakes, these poor people are in a constant state of sleep deprived chaotic panic.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
    3. Re:How common is this problem... by misterhypno · · Score: 2, Informative

      Tell that to my late father-in-law, who died from EXACTLY this problem.

      I'm sure that several members of his biological family would be happy to provide directions...

      All snarkiness aside, this happens far more often than the general public would like to believe. ONCE is too often and, with some tools, like sponges, X-ray scans are unrevealing. In surgery, certain items are thrown away during the procedures and that's where problems can arise, especially during long and involved processes. This is why the "layout and count" solution proposed earlier by someone else won't work - some stuff gets thrown out and simply cannot BE counted!

      When a surgeon has been on his or her feet for fifteen or twenty hours straight, doing highly technical work, demanding pinpoint precision, under life-or-death circumstances, it is relatively easy, at the end of the job, for the adrenaline to drop off and fatigue errors to happen, even in the best of circumstances and with the best in the business, which is exactly what happened in my father-in-law's case.

      Lee Darrow, Chicago, IL

    4. Re:How common is this problem... by Wudbaer · · Score: 4, Informative

      You have to be aware that the inside of the human abdomen is a very crowded and puzzling place. Lots of nooks and crannies small items can slip into, also the whole thing is constantly on the move due to the contractions of the digestive organs, beathing and certainly due to the doctors operating and mocing things around. Add a certain amount of blood and bloody water (you flush surfaces both to keep them from drying out (bad for the tissue) and to keep a clear field of vision. Add several hours of operating time for large operations and there is a clear risk to lose things inside the patient. A professional operating team will take several security measures to keep this from happening (see my other post in this thread), but there still is a considerable riskm even without haste and neglect (yes, I am a MD by training).

  7. Re:AFTER they close the patient?-for repairs. by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anyway put the patient on a non-metallic table and run a metal detector over them.

        Doctor: "Where's the table?"
        Nurse: "It was right here under the patient, who seems to be lying on the floor... "
        Doctor: "Oh... Where shall we have lunch?"

  8. sterilization? by Yonder+Way · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How rugged are RFID chips? How are they going to hold up to being heated in an autoclave for sterilization?

  9. Can they take the heat? by the+darn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't they use an autoclave or some such to sterilize the instruments? Can the RFID chips take the heat, moisture and pressue invloved in that procedure?

    --
    Ceci n'est pas un post.
  10. Okay. But... by Khaed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just count the damn instruments.

    Really. Car mechanics count screws.

    I count the screws when putting a computer together or doing work in it. I keep up with where each one goes.

    It didn't take me over eight years of college to figure this kind of thing out.

    "Okay, doctor, we used five clamps, but we only have four. We must have left one..."

    Duh? I mean, hello? You're a doctor. You're getting paid more than ninety percent of the population.

    Learn to count.

    1. Re:Okay. But... by elzurawka · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If your in a emergency room, you might have hundreds of tools that you need quick access to. You dont have time to count, or probobly the mental dextarity to remember to count, the number of tools your using when your trying to save someones life.
      You need to concentrate on what your doing, not on how many clamps you've used.

      --
      -EL
    2. Re:Okay. But... by mph · · Score: 2, Informative
      But the sponges won't be getting RFID chips anyway, so you still have the same problem.
      Huh? TFA was about sponges with RFID chips!
    3. Re:Okay. But... by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Just count the damn instruments.

      Really. Car mechanics count screws.

      Well, I suspect in the case of surgeries, if something starts going wrong, they're probably more busy trying to keep you from dying than remembering if that was the 5th or 6th hemostat of the day.

      When all goes perfectly normal, this might be easy. But when it starts going all to poo, I suspect that's a context in which careful counting can go by the wayside. Things probably get a little frantic when the patient is about to die.

      (Admittedly, on a 'routine' procedure where everything goes as expected, I would think your solution would be effective and obvious. ;-)

      Cheers
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Okay. But... by lazlo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      a pile of bloody sponges is much harder to count

      Maybe, but it's done. The last surgery I watched (my wife's C-section) they were extremely meticulous about sponges in versus sponges out. They double-checked the count of the number of packs-of-10 sponges in the room at the start, there was one person who it appeard had the sole duty of counting used sponges and putting them in little plastic strips with 10 sponge-sized pouches per strip. Then someone else double-checked that count. Then before they closed, they counted the number of unopened packs and added the number of plastic strips, and made sure it was the same as the number they started out with. It seemed like a very well-thought-out way of avoiding that exact problem.

      Actually, as far as uses of RFID go, this seems like a fairly good one. The incremental cost of adding RFID to surgical instruments is trivial, you aren't working against a dedicated attacker trying to subvert your system, and although the number of instances of instruments left in patients is fairly low, this system, I would think, would probably cost-justify itself given the cost-per-incident-avoided.

      --
      Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
    5. Re:Okay. But... by Shadowlore · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If your in a emergency room, you might have hundreds of tools that you need quick access to. You dont have time to count, or probobly the mental dextarity to remember to count, the number of tools your using when your trying to save someones life.
      You need to concentrate on what your doing, not on how many clamps you've used.


      That is why there are assistants! Seriously dude, you've got people, even in ER, who handle the tools and are not operating. Doctors don't just say "scalpel" and they magically appear in their hand. And they don't have to count either. A pair of trays. One with the tools laid out with a placement pattern below it, and the tools in their place, and an empty one next to it. When a tool is handed back you put it on the blank tray in it's place. No math involved, just your eyes. This type of procedure works well "on the battlefield", there is no reason not to work in a civilian ER.

      Furthermore, it isn't that hard to look at the opening for shinys before closing it up. Between the assistants keeping track of tools and the doctor looking at his work to see if there are any tools left there, there should be no excuse for leaving things in. Period.
      --
      My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
  11. So that's why... by digitaldc · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...I keep getting an unexplained $248.99 charge at the Target express line!

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
    1. Re:So that's why... by powerlord · · Score: 2, Funny
      ...I keep getting an unexplained $248.99 charge at the Target express line!
      ... and you wondered why it kept showing up on the receipt as "SURGCL STEEL CHST SPRDR"
      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
  12. Common occurrence? by LunaticTippy · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'd say it's fairly common. Common enough that I personally know 3 people who've had things left inside them.

    Expect it to become more and more common as surgeons become even more painfully overworked. It's not their fault. I blame a bizarre system of high spiralling costs combined with drastic costcutting.

    This may be an effective solution for leaving surgical tools behind, but that is treating a symptom instead of the root cause. Which is typical of US healthcare.

    --
    Man, you really need that seminar!
    1. Re:Common occurrence? by Dun+Malg · · Score: 3, Informative
      Expect it to become more and more common as surgeons become even more painfully overworked. It's not their fault. I blame a bizarre system of high spiralling costs combined with drastic costcutting.
      Don't forget the AMA, which tells medical schools how many doctors they're allowed to graduate every year. They've been artificially limiting the doctor supply from the beginning. If too many doctors are allowed, it might end up like (say) Austria, where you can wander in to a doctor's office and have a mole removed without an appointment for forty bucks. Heaven forbid the "noble" profession of doctoring should be reduced to what it really is, that of a "biologcal mechanic". It's the same moronic mindset that continues to allow the practice of hazing in the form of "residency".
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    2. Re:Common occurrence? by Mr.+Burrito · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is actually a lot that goes into becoming a competent physician. You may want your doctor to remove a mole now, but if that was all your doctor could do you might feel shortchanged when you needed someone to be able to manage your barely compensated congestive heart failure, set up your mechanical ventilator when you develop ARDS after a devastating car accident, or coax your premature infant through the first months of life.

      In some ways a physician is a "biological mechanic" (I suppose). But a physican in the US accepts at minimum 11 years of school and post-graduate medical training after high school (in my own experience, 16 years), and typically accrues between $150-400k in debt during this time. But more important than the enduring agony of never-ending school (much of which is also physically demanding), they also accept the emotional responsibility for others' lives.

      This responsibilty is drilled into us from the time we enter medical school and continues throughout training. Medicine is a noble profession and it has to be, because there is a lot at stake. We enter into a legally binding contract with every patient we talk to, touch, or are curb-sided about by a colleague, to provide medical care that is "standard of care". This is a lot of responsibility and it is a heavy burden.

      When patients die in our care, even if it is not "our fault", it is very difficult. Until you have had to personally sign the order: "1)comfort care only -- start morphine drip, 2) extubate" for a critically ill patient who has reached the point of medical futility despite your 2 weeks of effort, and then hold their hand as you let them die, you will not understand this kind of contract. But just about every physician has had to do this, probably within the first few months of internship.

      With regard to residency being a hazing experience -- in some ways this is true. However, there are just a certain number of situations and disease states that you have to encounter in training and life is only so long. If you cut the hours in half, you really would need to be in residency twice as long to be competent on your own. Then I guess we would really be in a bind as far as physician supply. The AMA has a difficult job enough as it is, balancing physician supply with demand and making sure that training programs meet minimum standards to ensure adequate training.

      The economics of health care are admittedly complex. However, the $40 you spend in Austria is in fact heavily subsidized by taxes. Somebody has to pay the transcripionist, the nurses, the medical assistants, the overhead associated with the clinic physical plant, among numerous other things. Then some portion maybe ought to go to the physician who is actually seeing the patient. In the US, somewhat less than 15% of health care costs represent physician reimbursement. Apply this to your $40 tab in Austria and use your analytical skills to show me how this makes financial sense.

    3. Re:Common occurrence? by Mr.+Burrito · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your equating the practice of medicine to installing upholstery and transmission repair is a little humorous. I guess you would want the upholsterer to know about transmission repair if they were connected by thick blood vessels that were bleeding like stink and the car was about to die. An upholsterer can go take a bathroom break and catch Oprah in the middle of a job. I really would have liked to do that on numerous occasions in the OR. You say that the critical stuff doesn't happen very much, but 50% of my medical school class specialized in fields other than primary care, and even some fraction of the primary care folks are hospitalists and they deal with very sick patients on a daily basis. I actually know very few people in my class who don't deal with very sick people on a daily basis. Besides that, knowing what is critical and what isn't isn't easy, and when doctors screw that up is when they make the evening news. But I will try to explain this difficult topic.

      For starters, dermatologists are and really need to be experts of the skin system. The skin is actually a fantastically complex organ that is essential for survival. There are all kinds of primary skin disorders as well as all kinds of cutaneous manifestations of systemic diseases that dermatologists must recognize, understand, and know how to treat. So they need to know a lot about all these other systems and communicate effectively to the doctors that treat those systems, too. They perform a lot of surgery and prescribe a lot of medications, and they need to understand all sorts of medical issues that might be contraindications to surgery or medication, including congesive heart failure. They need to understand and be able to treat or at least provide initial treatment of a number of possible complications. They need to communicate effectively with the pathologist, with the internist (who may further coordinate care), or the general surgeon, who may be called upon to perform more extensive surgery. Dermatologists may be involved in continuing care of patients with quite complex medical histories. Dermatologists typically do a medicine internship before their residency training. This can be very demanding, but it is absolutely necessary.

      But maybe you went to family practice doctor first. Believe it or not, a family doctor needs their medical school and residency to: 1) know that it probably is a mole and not a melanoma, 2) know what medications to use for local anesthesia, their contraindications, and how much to use, 3) what the best resection method is to preserve a good cosmetic outcome, 4) how to suture it up without it popping open and increasing the risk of infection or a bad cosmetic outcome, 5) how to package the skin sample so that the pathologist can examine it effectively, 6) read and understand the pathologist's report, and 7) know what to do next if the mole actually isn't a mole but a melanoma. These are just the basics, though, because there are whole books written about each step. After the mole is removed, you might want to talk to your FP about some palpitations you've been having, and he or she needs to know all about the heart -- what is worriesome, what is not, how to read an EKG, etc. Or you might want to ask about your back pain, and he or she needs to know what the worrisome signs are (because there are actually a lot of things that can cause back pain that you really need to rule out even though common things are common). The FP is also looking out for your best interests and keeping track of when you need a mammogram or a colonoscopy, and they need to know all about breast and colon cancer. The list of things they need to know is very long. What specifically would you have them not know about?

      The AMA has a pretty powerful say, but a lot of physicians are not AMA members. The various medical colleges keep a very close eye on the minimum requirements for training for minimum competence in the various specialties. Medical school really is the minimum level of training for a doct

  13. Turn it around by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'm more worried that they won't forget to put the RFID in the patient before they close the body.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  14. The new trend: by gardyloo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Warwalking. "Hm... Spidey-sense tingling. w00t! Free wireless!"

  15. Re:Why not just count them? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not a chance: you cannot mix the bloodied, used instruments with the sterile new ones on the shelf, they have to be discarded or autoclaved, and many of them are single use or packed in sterile containers which have no tool-secific shape.

  16. Let's compare this to.... by TheDarkener · · Score: 3, Funny

    A computer technician. I know, I know, they are very much different...but they're actually the same, too. ;)

    Tech 1: Ok, just got done replacing the power supply in this bad boy, let's fire it up.

    Tech 2: Hey, where's my screwdriver....

    *ZOT*

    Tech 1: Oh, wait a minute.... oh, ok here's the problem, I left this screwdriver lying on the motherboard and it fried the motherboard!

    Tech 2: Shouldn't you have looked inside the case before you put the cover back on?

    Tech 1: Maybe we should put RFID tags on our tools so I won't do this again...

    Tech 2: .... *SLAP*

    How about, stop smoking the sticky-icky right before you work on very important things (I.E. computers, human bodies)...

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  17. Re:My Dog - not in patient... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2, Funny
    My dog has a very small RFID...

    This will definitely help keep your dog from being left inside a patient...
    Doctor: Dog?
    Nurse: Check.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  18. Re:Do you not think it is strange... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Funny
    Auto mechanics seem to know how to keep from leaving a wrench inside the engine that they had in pieces.
    I have a really nice 3/8" drive Snap-On ratchet, extension, and 13mm socket that say otherwise.
    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  19. Re:Pencil and Paper ... easier & cheaper by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful
    WTF? Why do they need a superduperwonderfulelectrogadget to solve this problem? The easier & cheaper solution involves a pencil and a piece of paper. Do you have the scalpel? Check. Do you have the bar of soap? Check.
    Cripes, is this really that hard to understand? Currently, the way they do it is have people counting the instruments, through all sorts of redundant methods. Still, because it's humans doing the work, the system is subject to occasional human error. Your solution of "pencil & paper, duh" is more if the same: it's humans doing the work, so the system is subject to human error. RFID takes the error inducing element out. Pencil and paper does not.
    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  20. Re:An even better idea! by Wudbaer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Which is exacly how it is (or should be) done, and yes, I am a MD by training. The OR nurse assisting the docs during the operation opens a certain amount of surgical instrument etc. kits with a clearly defined number of items in it. It is one of her responsibilities to keep track of the number of instruments she gives to the doctors as well as the number she is getting back and ones that get "lost" outside the patient (dropped to the floor, given to a third party outside the operating team, e.g. to pass tissue samples or excised organs, tumor parts etc.). The same applies for gauze pads, surgical cloth etc. Gauze particles and cloth also have either metallic tags or markings that show up on X-rays on them to be able to locate them either after the fact or, in difficult cases where you know something is missing but can't find it, before clothing the patient using a portable c-beam x-ray machine.

    Nevertheless both the nurses and the docs are only human and work often inhuman working hours under extreme pressure, so in spite of all those measure it still can happen that surgical items remain inside the patient.

  21. the non-ISO compliant Operating Room by kris_lang · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hey

    Let me give you a quick summary of procedure in an operating room, as regards instruments and instrument counts:

    Every surgeon has a card (usually, literally a 3"x5" index card) with preferences and requirements for each particular operation they perform: for an appendectomy they may need a Saxony brand defrobulator and a #10 blade as the specialized items and they like to close the bowel with 2-0 (aka 00) chromic (made from catgut) and they like to close the skin with 3-0 poly and 6-0 purebread (usually used in cataract / ophthalmic procedures, but hey Underdog spoke out to me.) There might be three each of any particular scalpel blade they need and howsoever much of those stitches threaded on the appropriate types of needles: curved, straight, cutting, non-cutting, etc. There will also be the appropriate number of hemostats, deblooduclips, etc, that are necessary for the procedure. For a different procedure, say a vasectomy,... okay, let's say cranial burr hole or craniotomy for decompression of subdural for all the guys wincing out there, they may want a hand-twist drill, plastic clips for holding the scalp edges, good thick chromic for the fascial closure, etc., so a different set of objects.

    There will be a minimum of two nurses assisting with the procedure, a scrub nurse (scrubbed in to the operation, hence the name) and a circulating nurse. The circulator will make sure that the tray with all of the equipment is already there before the operation starts. Even before the surgeon scrubs in, the scrub nurse will also go over the instruments and objects and de a pre-op count: making sure that there is enough of every item and making a note of the number of objects, including sponges which are actually small pieces of cloth uses to sponge up that red stuff that leaks out humans when they're cut. These cloths usually have a radio-opaque fiber sewn into them so that when they're accidentally left in the human body, something is easily apparent on X-ray or C-T; cotton is not so opaque to x-radiation.

    The nurses know that there are int counts[i] of char* objects[i] for each of the different objects. The preop counts array is usually written on the form the circ nurse fills out. Then all of the really good fun stuff
    happens, and as it is almost all done and the surgeon is getting ready to close, the scrub nurse starts a pre-close count: counts that the number of needles handed back by the surgeon plus the number of unused needles adds up to the number that was in the pre-op count (for each variety of pre-threaded needle). They also check that the number of clean unused sponges (whether 1"x1", 2"x2", 0.5"x0.5", etc) added to the number of blooded sponges handed back by the surgeon off of the surgical field also add up to the number expected. All of the other instruments: retractors, hemostats, bolt-cutters (used to cut the titanium bars in the fun ortho cases), machetes (used in amputations...), are also counted to make sure none are missing. (sometimes, even retractors fall into the morbidly obese and are missed.)

    If the pre-op count is not correct, there is a frenzy as the doc looks inside the patient (or, if the closing is happening real fast, the doc says find it find it and the nurses run around checking the little bits on the floor and mopping up with surgical cloths to see if a needle fell onto the floor or onto the surgeons' or nurses' gowns or even if the needle is stuck onto the bottom of the little blue booties the OR personnel are using to cover their hospital footwear.)

    If the count is correct, then the closing is done, and then the scrub nurse does ANOTHER final post-op count and rewrites it all down to make sure nothing was left behind.

    Amazingly, even in cases where stuff was left behind, the written records usually show that the count was correct: someone takes a shortcut and writes a copy of the list and it often isn't until the patient has an infection or a recurrent problems days, weeks, months, years down the r

  22. But what if..... by ChestyLaRueGal · · Score: 2, Informative

    say a drill bit breaks off inside? My grandmother has several pieces of drillbit stuck in her wrist from sugeries. Fancy RFID technology isn't helpful there.

  23. Candy RFIDs? by Slur · · Score: 2, Funny

    And of course, Junior Mints should come with RFIDs just to be safe.

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media