BERLIN (AP)
-- A lawyer in Germany claims surgeons left up to 16 objects in her
client's body after an operation for prostate cancer. She is seeking
(EURO)80,000 ($106,216) plus costs for the family of the patient, who
has since died. Surgical slips such as these are rare, but with millions
of operations performed worldwide each year mistakes do sometimes
occur.
According to Loyola University in
Chicago, citing medical studies, some 1,500 patients in the United
States have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery
each year. Most of the objects are sponges used to control patient
bleeding during long operations. They can lead to pain, infections and
other medical complications.
Such cases have
prompted doctors to coin the term "retained surgical items" and draw up
guidelines to prevent them occurring. These include accounting for all
items after surgery - such as with the help of RFID chips - and using
equipment containing special strips that show up clearly in x-rays.
Some notable cases:
-In
Dec. 2011, a man in Ohio who had two towels left in his body after
surgery at a Veterans hospital won a $275,000 settlement from the
federal government.
-In Aug. 2012, California regulators fined a Fresno hospital $50,000 for leaving a towel in a patient after abdominal surgery.
-
In Sept. 2012, The Canberra Times of Australia reported that a patient
required a second operation after a surgical instrument was left in the
abdomen. The incident prompted Canberra hospitals to begin special
training for staff to make sure they kept better track of instruments
during surgery.
- In Feb. 2010, doctors in the
Czech Republic discovered a foot-long metal tube had been left inside a
woman's abdomen five months after surgery. The chief of the clinic said
four staff members had been punished.
- In
March 2009, a Kentucky jury awarded a woman $2.5 million after she
required surgery to remove a sponge left inside her after a hysterectomy
three years earlier. Part of her small intestine had to be removed.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
