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Counting Sponges during Surgery
By
KSPR News
Story Created:
Jul 7, 2009 at 11:00 AM CDT
Story Updated:
Jul 7, 2009 at 11:13 AM CDT
It happens in approximately one out of every six thousand operations.
A surgical team unintentionally leaves something-- such as a sponge-- inside of a patient.
Doctors at Mayo Clinic want to make sure that doesn't happen. They're using "grocery store bar code technology" to account for all sponges, in hopes of reducing errors in the operating room.
"5"
Five sponges accounted for and ready for use in this operation.
"The longer cases, you might run through many many packs of sponges, upwards of 200 to 300 sponges."
And on rare occasions one can get left behind.
"And what we found was it's just a problem with human error in the sense of when you have a complex environment and you're trying to count something, sometimes a simple math mistake happens and it results in a retained sponge."
So to combat this rare, but real problem, Dr. Robert Cima equipped his o.r. with bar code technology. He wants to be sure that any sponge that goes in ("5")comes out.
"It keeps a ledger of how many sponges we've counted in and counted out."
The technology's similar to what they use in the grocery store check out line which is very accurate. There's only one mistake for every several million swipes of the bar code. Even so, Dr. Cima's team continues to manually count every sponge and record the numbers on a white board. Bar code technology is part of the checks and balances used to reduce errors and improve safety for every patient who comes into this operating room.
"That’s really the advantage of the technology. It's reliable. It's safe. It's simple technology."
Doctors say leaving an object in a patient is very rare. He says bar code technology will help reduce these errors. He’s also looking at technologies to track other surgical instruments, such as needles and clamps.
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