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:Surgeon accountability?

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

We do all make mistakes, and surgeons are no exception.

I had a laproscopic procedure done a few years back and in the end I developed and abdominal infection. The surgeon had done his work, as had the hospital, but bacteria are microscopic. And, sometimes, the procedure just has a mistake.

As best as the surgeon could guess, there must have been some bacteria on one of the instruments despite all of the precautions. Shortly afterwards, though he didn't say so, I could tell that he was worried. Once I made it clear that I had no intentions of suing him, he became far more relaxed.

I don't blame him, and told him as much. Sometimes, even when you follow all of the proper procedures, things don't turn out right. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean he did it through incompetence or malice. Perhaps I would feel differently if it hadn't turned out well enough in the end, but given the amount of medical procedures I've been through, I expect I would have felt this way regardless.

Re:A 39 cent solution

[Just Some Guy]

I was a Navy operating room tech. As a junior enlisted, I yelled at an officer exactly one time: when a new anesthesiology resident saw a sponge on the floor and helpfully threw it away in his own trashcan (which the nurses and techs aren't responsible for). At the end of the case when the count was off, the surgeon proceeded to pitch a royal conniption - and justifiably so. We tore the room apart, went through the trash, went through the biohazard trash (filled with bloody stuff), dismantled every piece of equipment that it could possibly have fallen into, and generally panicked. After about 20 minutes of frantic searching, the new guy walked in and asked us very sympathetically what was wrong. He went white as we told him and ran to fetch his garbage, thus rescuing us from The Wratch Of The Surgeon.

We asked him to please not do that again.

But this barcode scheme wouldn't have helped. We already knew we were missing exactly one sponge, and it wouldn't have told us that it had been taken from the surgical suite. As much as I hate to say it, this is well beyond the point of diminishing returns and may even be more dangerous than the current system. This will require more labor, and thus either cause surgeries to take longer (exposing patients to risks of longer anesthesia) or raise surgical headount and costs and thereby make medical care even harder to get for some people. At some point, you have to say "the current level of risk is just about as good as we can get it" and move on.

You can get risk levels arbitrarily low given an infinite amount of resources. We don't have infinite resources.