When doctors sewing up a patient after an operation inadvertently leave surgical equipment like sponges inside the body, the result can harm or even kill the patient. Such mistakes also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in further treatment and legal costs. Along with taking out the wrong kidney or operating on the wrong person, leaving a sponge in a patient is the kind of avoidable medical nightmare that health-care quality experts consider a never event—that is, it should never happen.
It's hard to know precisely how often it does. A review at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., from 2003 to 2006 found a rate of about one "retained foreign object" case for every 5,500 surgeries. Another analysis of 20 years of malpractice settlements found that such incidents were the most common "never events," with an estimated 2,024 claims per year, or a rate of more than five each day. The U.S. has no comprehensive system for measuring how often doctors mistakenly leave items in patients' bodies. The lack of data itself is revealing, when you consider, for example, how scrupulously aviation accidents are tracked.
The most common approach for making sure all sponges come out of patients is to count them as they go in. But the current counting methods "are prone to human error," according to an October report (PDF) by the Joint Commission, a nonprofit that certifies health-care providers on quality standards. Counts are wrong about 10 percent to 15 percent of the time, and most cases where sponges are left in the patient "occur with what staff believe is a correct count," according to the report.
Executives from Stryker and Patient Safety Technologies were not available for an interview on Tuesday. Patient Safety Technologies had revenue of about $20 million in the 12 months through September 2013. A list of roughly three dozenclients on its website includes the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
A few other companies make high-tech sponges intended to reduce the risk that absent-minded doctors will leave one behind, including RF Surgical Systems and ClearCount. Stryker's acquisition puts a global sales force behind the technology.
