gauze left intentionally during surgery?

[remotefuse]

I was reading about items left behind during surgery, and came across an interesting statistic. According to the article I was reading, during a study, upwards of 50% of gauze left behind was left intentionally by the surgeon for one reason or another. Ive never heard of such a practice. Do any of you have any idea of what this is about. just curious, but it sounds dubious to me.

[Julius Seizure]

You're awesome. Not sure why I didn't think to do that.

So the article wording was incorrect/misleading. It was actually 824 cases of the count being off, not 824 cases of "sponges that remained inside surgery patients" as stated in the article.

And whaaaa? 7% of these cases, they never did a freaking count? What kind of backwards shenanigans is that??

Emergent surgeries - like truly emergent, crashing onto ECMO, bleeding out. No time for counts or "by the book" time outs.

[klone, MSN, RN]

My lack of knowledge of other areas of nursing besides OB is clearly showing! :)

[AnnieOaklyRN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

My friend just had to have 7 surgeries on his arm because the surgeon left a guide wire in his arm during emergency vascular surgery, and they didn't find it for another 2 surgeries. He had to have the emergency vascular surgery because his orthopedic surgeon nicked his artery during a minor procedure and just sewed his arm up and only told he and his wife something went wrong during the surgeon. No instructions of follow up, and no direction to see him the following day or what to look for. The next day he developed compartment syndrome from a growing hematoma which eventually bled out of the incision prompting the visit to the ER, and it was all down hill from there!

7 surgeries with multiple hospitalizations over the month, multiple units of blood, massive infection, a gaping wound that has to be closed with a wound vac, and he no longer has a functioning radial artery... all because of two surgeons made mistakes. He went in for a ruptured biceps tendon, what should have been a fairly minor procedure and now he has limited arm function, multiple wounds on his arms and legs from grafts, all because of mistakes. The system is broken, yes we are human, but how do TWO surgeons in TWO separate surgeries make such disastrous mistakes on the same patient!

On a good note he states his house will be paid off sooner then he thought

Annie