Fortunately, it happens infrequently. That's little comfort to the one in 5,000 surgical patients who end up with medical tools left inside of them after an operation.
Numerous strict procedures are in place in most hospitals to minimize the risk of losing track of surgical instruments during a procedure. Nevertheless, the numbers of these instances are believed to be on the rise worldwide.
It's difficult to pin down the numbers of cases of medical tools being left in patients' bodies after operations. This is because there are few or no national or international, standardized methods or requirements for disclosing such information publicly.
Instead, it's often up to individual surgeons and hospitals how to record and whether to divulge to potential patients such cases of "lost" surgical instruments. Most choose not to make it widely available. The result is a public that is largely unaware of the possible risks of going home after surgery with medical tools inside.
Hundreds of thousands of operations are performed daily across the US alone. A vast majority are performed safely and with due diligence.
It is a very small percentage of patients that experience mistakes by physicians. This includes having surgical instruments sewn up in their bodies.
Every hospital in North America, in fact, has strong policies in place to prevent this. The most important one, which is very easy to administer and monitor, is the inventory policy.
Surgeons and/or the nurses who assist them must take a detailed inventory of every medical tool to be used in a procedure. They must then re-count and account for each one of those surgical instruments after the procedure. In theory, any missing medical tools require should lead to follow up investigation.
However, mistakes can and do occur. Many doctors concur that even just one mistake is one too many.
Sometimes surgeons realize their mistake shortly after stitching up the patient. This almost always necessitates extra diagnostic tests like x-ray or ultrasound. It may even lead to having to undo sutures or make new incisions to find and/or remove the missing medical tool. The result is longer-than-anticipated surgery times and extended hospital stays.
In rare cases, the missing surgical instrument gets overlooked altogether. Post-op patients are simply sent home to recover.
Instead, they develop recurrent infections, fevers and chronic pain. Sometimes they end up with lacerations, punctures or tears in organs or tissue from the medical tool. When this occurs, permanent damage is a possibility.
In the rarest of cases, patients may suffer from unexplained illnesses and pain for years. Unfortunately, depending on the type of surgical instrument and the location it ends up, it may not be detected by x-ray or ultrasound.
The patient may be written off by the medical community as a chronic complainer or as having a mental illness. They are sometimes misdiagnosed as clinically depressed.
They may also be diagnosed with an illness that is difficult to verify, like fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome. The emotional and physical toll on such patients can be tremendous.
Surgical patients have minimal control over what happens during an operation. This is particularly true in cases where a patient undergoes general anesthesia for the procedure.
Instead, those who are contemplating or planning a surgery should plan ahead. Taking steps to prevent the possibility of a medical tool being left behind can include:
1) Ask for statistics/records: Granted, these can be difficult to obtain. Even if you ask the right questions of the right people, you may still be denied the information you are looking for.
However, you have the right as a consumer to ask questions, even if it annoys someone. Call your hospital's records department and ask if you can have access to their medical malpractice statistics. Ask in particular about cases of surgical instruments being left inside of patients.
Ask the same questions of your surgeon, too. Your surgeon may have a better personal track record than the hospital in general.
2) Find out what procedure your hospital uses to minimize the risk of losing track of surgical instruments: Some hospitals have implemented state-of-the-art bar code technology to prevent the misplacement of medical tools.
With this system, all surgical instruments are scanned by bar code into a computer prior to surgery. Surgical instruments may also then be counted manually as well. The medical tools are then re-scanned after the procedure. Computers often catch errors that humans miss.
3) Be your own advocate: If you experience unexplained pain, re-curing fever or infections or other health problems post-surgery, make a fuss. Insist that your doctor(s) do more thorough testing.
Specifically mention the possibility that you have a medical tool/surgical instrument lodged in your body. Sometimes all it takes not to have your complaints written off is persistence.
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