Health Channel Show-When tools are left behind

I am glad I did not see that show before I had any of my surgeries.

They focused the show on several cases and had the actual patients on to tell their stories. The first one was a gentlemen who had a 12" retractor left in him and after several complaints and trips to the ER over the weeks afterwards they finally took an X-ray and found it. I was amazed that he had not bent over and had this thing kill him.

The next one was a women who had undergone a biopsy of her right breast. While they did not find any cancer they did leave 2 surgical sponges behind that caused an infection. The sad thing in the case as well as the others is that it took the medical staff weeks to find the problems. By the time they did find the sponges this poor women's breast had swelled to the size of her head.

On the last case they reviewed it was a man who had a perforated intestine if I remember correctly. The surgery to repair it went well but he started to have problems right away and was back and forth to the ER several times over the next weeks. It took them some time but they finally did an X-ray and found that a 12 inch retractor had been left inside him. They figured it would be a 30 minutes surgery to remove it, but they got the surprise of their lives when they opened the man up. They found he had a flesh eating staph infection. It had pretty much liquefied his intestines and some other organs. He spent like the next 6 months in the hospital while they tried to kill off the bacteria. Apparently it is immune to everything except bleach. The nurses had to pack the open wound with clorox soaked sponges twice a day. Man it was creepy.

Of course they also showed a doctor from Harvard who is experimenting in ways to keep track of surgical gear by using bar code scanners. Everything has a bar code on it, including the sponges and as they are used they are scanned in and when they are done being used they are scanned out. Before they close they can have the computer tell you if something was not scanned out and what the exact item was. I thought it was a great idea and while I am sure it has it's downside I can see it being a useful tool overall. Maybe enough that doctors using the scanners will have a reduction of some sort in their malpractice coverage. I know that is a big killer for many doc's right now.