Patients who undergo emergency surgery are nine times more likely than normal surgery patients to have a tool or a sponge left inside their bodies, US researchers said recently.
The researchers' findings may help hospitals develop better ways to ensure that patients don't leave the operating room with an unwanted souvenir, said Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston and the study's lead author.
Gawande and his colleagues analyzed malpractice claims filed with an insurance company between 1985 and 2001. In all, 54 cases were confirmed to involve retained objects.
More than two-thirds of the cases involved sponges, which are typically thick napkin-sized pads that soak up blood, but nearly a third involved instruments. The 61 objects left in the 54 patients ranged from a small pad no bigger than a quarter to a 12-inch (30.5-cm) metal retractor.
Embedded sponges can lead to infection, and instruments left behind can tear up tissues.
"All of these are very hard to lose inside a person. Our data show it to be a rare problem - about 1 in 15,000 operations," Gawande told reporters. "But our study shows it can occur, and does occur, on some predictable basis in unpredictable situations."
The risk was nine times higher than normal during emergency surgery and four times greater if there was an unexpected change in the operation, such as when doctors operate to treat one problem and discover another.
(Shanghai Star January 25, 2003)
