Bar Codes Keep Surgical Objects Outside Patients

Reservoir Hill writes "Every year about 1,500 people in the US have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery, according to medical studies. To prevent this potentially deadly problem, Loyola University Medical Center is utilizing a new technology that is helping its surgical teams keep track of all sponges used during a surgical procedure. Each sponge has a unique bar code affixed to it that is scanned by a high-tech device to obtain a count. Before a procedure begins, the identification number of the patient and the badge of the surgical team member maintaining the count are scanned into the counter. When a sponge is removed from a patient, it is scanned back into the system. A surgical procedure cannot end until all sponges are accounted for."

Comments

Re:Ya gotta wonder..

[Rakishi]

I'd prefer a doctor operating one me to pay attention to the patient not pause to remember if this was the 16th sponge he took out or if the 16th was the one he took out 10 minutes ago.

Re:Ya gotta wonder..

[timmarhy]

There's 100's of objects involved in some surgeries, some procedures taking many hours with multiple specialists having to come in and out to work on their area of expertise.

So until you have a medical degree and the years of on the job experience that it takes to even set foot in a surgery, you don't get to call anyone an idiot that does.

Doing otherwise makes you look like a typical fat,lazy, IGNORANT armchair skeptic who can't even be bothered to use the slightest bit of brain power their pathetic brain is capable of mustering.

Re:Anything.

[Edward Kmett]

I have enough trouble getting these things to scan under ideal conditions at the grocery store let alone after being pulled used and bloodied from the body of a patient.

Re:RFID?

[Bentov]

I work at a Level 1 trauma center and we do indeed use RFID sponges. Currently we are only using them on a trial basis for trauma surgeries, but I would guess that once the cost drops some, we will infact use them for all surgeries. The RFID wands cost about $50.($135 patient cost). Sponges are bad, but the body will encapsulate them after awhile....retractors on the other hand....I don't know how the hell you leave something 1 foot long and 1.5 inches wide in someone...that boggles the mind. As someone said earlier though, when you have multiple surgeons, multiple residents, multiple scrub techs and circulators, things will get missed. Ofcourse the worst thing is what people call it when something is left in a patient or something goes wrong, a "surgical misadventure" that is just wrong.

Re:Surgeon accountability?

[Puff of Logic]

One of the interesting points of the book was that there is very little scientific study on medical errors and how to best avoid them. Of course there isn't a lot of study, because the ever-more litigious state of modern medicine has created an atmosphere in which a physician/surgeon cannot say "I screwed up, let's learn from this" for fear of being sued into oblivion. While I certainly acknowledge that doctors should be accountable for true malpractice, we hold them to a standard of perfection that would be considered absolutely ridiculous in any other field. Here's a thought: how about no lawyer is allowed to file suit against a physician (on behalf of a patient) unless that lawyer has never screwed up a piece of paperwork. Alternatively, we could create a climate in which lawyers can be sued by their clients for the "pain and suffering" of losing a court case if the lawyer didn't pursue absolutely every available avenue, even the ones with a very poor likelihood of success.

See how completely unreasonable that would be? I should be clear that I'm not bagging on lawyers here, but using them as an example of how another profession might be held to ridiculous standards of perfection. M&M conferences would be a far more effective learning tool if there was no sense of blame, and doctors could freely help their colleagues learn from prior mistakes.

A 39 cent solution

[wealthychef]

I have an idea, call me a radical. You take a slip of paper and two bowls. You count the sponges before the operation, and write the number on the paper and put the paper and the clean sponges in bowl 1. You put the used sponges in bowl 2. The operation cannot be completed until the number of sponges in the bowls matches that on the piece of paper. Come on, folks, why do you need a bar code scanner, how does that make this easier? The only advantage of the scanner is that it prevents doctors from lying and saying they counted them -- apparently it's a real possibility, or they would just count them.