Monday, March 20, 2006
NO TOWEL LEFT BEHIND
NO TOWEL LEFT BEHIND
Surgeon forgets towel inside of man afer colon surgery
A California man went in for an operation, and came out with something strange in his stomach.
William Miller came out of colon surgery at the M.D. Cancer Center in Houston suffering a fever and was hardly able to walk for 73 days. No one knew what was wrong until the doctors discovered a towel had been left in his abdomen after the surgery.
Miller sued the Cancer Center, arguing that the doctors should have found the towel sooner.
Miller's experince unfortunatly is not as rare as one would think. A study shows that malpractice claims involving objects left in patients bodies is no unusual according to Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston.
Based on the nearly 29 million hospital surgeries performed each year, the researchers estimate that more than 1,500 cases of retained foreign objects occur annually in the U.S.accoring to Mumbai's newportal website.
While many of these cases have involved sponges, typically napkin shaped pads designed to soak up blood, a third of them involved sergical instruments.
"All of these are very hard to loose inside of a person," said Gawande, "Our data shows it to be a rare problem, about 1 in 15,000 operation."
Such forgetfulness seems so strange that it might be considered comical, if the consequences were not so often serious. A forgotten item can cause a patient more operations, time off of work, circulitory malfunctions and in some cases, death according to MNS health and fitness publication. A misplaced item may mean another operation, a dangerous inflammatory reaction, or even death. As for the forgetful doctors there are lawsuits fo face and diciplinary actions which may put their employment in danger.
The risk of having and instrument or sponge left in you is nine times during emergency surgery than normal and four times greater if an unexpected change in operation takes place.
Underweight people are at higher risk than overweight people.
"You have more room to loose things," said Gawande.
Gawande said one solution to the problem would be to routinely X-ray patients after emergency surgery or after an operation in which the game plan changes.
Surgeon forgets towel inside of man afer colon surgery
A California man went in for an operation, and came out with something strange in his stomach.
William Miller came out of colon surgery at the M.D. Cancer Center in Houston suffering a fever and was hardly able to walk for 73 days. No one knew what was wrong until the doctors discovered a towel had been left in his abdomen after the surgery.
Miller sued the Cancer Center, arguing that the doctors should have found the towel sooner.
Miller's experince unfortunatly is not as rare as one would think. A study shows that malpractice claims involving objects left in patients bodies is no unusual according to Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston.
Based on the nearly 29 million hospital surgeries performed each year, the researchers estimate that more than 1,500 cases of retained foreign objects occur annually in the U.S.accoring to Mumbai's newportal website.
While many of these cases have involved sponges, typically napkin shaped pads designed to soak up blood, a third of them involved sergical instruments.
"All of these are very hard to loose inside of a person," said Gawande, "Our data shows it to be a rare problem, about 1 in 15,000 operation."
Such forgetfulness seems so strange that it might be considered comical, if the consequences were not so often serious. A forgotten item can cause a patient more operations, time off of work, circulitory malfunctions and in some cases, death according to MNS health and fitness publication. A misplaced item may mean another operation, a dangerous inflammatory reaction, or even death. As for the forgetful doctors there are lawsuits fo face and diciplinary actions which may put their employment in danger.
The risk of having and instrument or sponge left in you is nine times during emergency surgery than normal and four times greater if an unexpected change in operation takes place.
Underweight people are at higher risk than overweight people.
"You have more room to loose things," said Gawande.
Gawande said one solution to the problem would be to routinely X-ray patients after emergency surgery or after an operation in which the game plan changes.
# posted by Minni @ 5:29 PM 
