Smart sponges to reduce surgical accidents in US

A new barcode system used on surgical sponges will be trialled by the Veterans’ Administration West Los Angeles Health Care Centre this month to improve patient safety.

The system is designed to prevent used sponges being left in patients after surgical operations.

The developers of the smart sponge say it has the potential to prevent thousands of accidents on the operating table.

West Los Angeles VA hospital will test the new Safety-Sponge system, which was developed and launched by SurgiCount Medical, a subsidiary of US-firm Patient Safety Technologies.

The Safety-Sponge system will work similar to the way supermarket checkouts operate. Surgical teams will scan a barcode on each sponge before they use it and will then scan them again after use, ensuring all are accounted for.

Rick Bertram, president of SurgiCount Medical told E-Health Insider: “This is our first government order and complements the contracts we have won with a number of private healthcare providers.”

Bertram said of the system: “This is a new innovation which we are extremely proud of and will save thousands from its ability to prevent accidents on the operating table. The feedback we have received has been great and we hope the Los Angeles VA will create a good opinion for others to follow.”

Surgeons will be alerted of any missing barcode matches from the Safety-Sponge before the patient is stitched up.

Leaving surgical sponges in patients after surgery can lead to serious complications for patients such as sepsis, intestinal obstruction, fistula or abscess formation and adhesions.

Tim Goheen, director of preoperative nursing for the VA Los Angeles Healthcare System said: “The Safety-Sponge System is an important advance in surgical care, and we are pleased to make this exciting technology a standard element of surgical practice at our West Los Angeles medical centre, the highest- volume surgical centres in the VA network.”

Last month, E-Health Insider revealed how researchers at Stanford University demonstrated how using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on sponges and equipment can help to ensure that they were not accidentally left in the patient.

However, SurgiCount say that its Safety-Sponge System is more accurate than RFID and less costly.

They claim that between 3,000 and 5,000 sponges are accidentally left inside patients each year in the United States, resulting in hospitals paying out between $500m and $750m in compensation every year.

The National Patient Safety Agency said that there were no plans to introduce such a system in the UK.

A spokesperson for the NPSA told EHI: “We have no plans to introduce such a system within the NHS. Compared to the figures estimated for the US, the accident rate here in the UK is significantly lower; however we are planning a new blood safety campaign, which we hope to release soon.”

The new blood safety campaign will aim to highlight the importance of checking patients before stitching them back up to medical staff and “aims to keep patients happy and healthy, limiting the need for patients to be re-operated on.”

It will also ensure that blood transfusions go ahead smoothly, without any problems and with all checks made before and after the surgery, which Lacey said would be more “cost-effective and patient friendly”.

Link

EHI Newsletter 21/07/2006, Diary piece