Sponges out When RFID Is In

Filed in archive Implementation on July 18, 2006

Let me run you through some of the facts stated in one of the studies conducted in Massachusetts. It states that foreign objects were left in the body in one out of every ten thousand surgeries and another study stated that foreign objects added four days to an average stay in hospital and caused fifty seven deaths in U.S. in the year 2000 and the most interesting fact about this study was that two-thirds of the objects left in the body cavity were sponges.

Now how do you feel after reading these facts, petrified? Surely you should but now Stanford University School of Medicine has gone ahead and conducted a study where RFID tags have been attached to surgical sponges in order to locate them in the body before the operation ends.

In around eight trials which were conducted at Stanford, the surgeon inserted one or two of the tagged sponges while the incision was still open and another surgeon made use of a prototype twelve inch wand which was attached to a device which equaled the size of a toaster oven in order to detect the sponge while the other surgeon held the incision closed. In each of the trials the sponge was located within three seconds and in these trials the surgeons appreciated the speed and accuracy of the technique but rated the prototype wand as cumbersome.

There is always a chance of foreign objects being left in the body during operations and this risk multiplies during surgeries therefore RFID would certainly go a long way in reducing these figures.

Thnx eurekalert