Surgical Tools to Include RFID 272
andrewman327 writes "Reuters is reporting that hospitals are considering embedding RFID tags in surgical tools to prevent leaving them in patients. After closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside. The biggest current stumbling block is the chip's size, though scientists hope they will continue shrinking as the state of the art advances."
AFTER they close the patient?-for repairs. (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyway put the patient on a non-metallic table and run a metal detector over them.
Re:A better idea... (Score:1, Interesting)
How common is this problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would surgeons (or assistants) think it's okay to leave a foreign object lying on top of an organ or tissue in the first place?! Also why is the surgeon in such a rush that s/he would be so sloppy?
Maybe this would be more appropiate for battlefield sitautions where things can get hairy, but then again, it's pretty rare to do open surgery in the battlefield!
sterilization? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can they take the heat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How common is this problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [washingtonpost.com] is a good article on the subject. It claims the ER system is on the verge of collapse.
Hardly thinking it's okay to make mistakes, these poor people are in a constant state of sleep deprived chaotic panic.
Re:A better idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
My hospital just got around to putting computers in the operating rooms, and it'll be another couple years before we're acutally using them for charting and get rid of all the dead trees.
Something this flashy (read: expensive) for a (supposedly) rare occurance isn't gonna fly in today's hospital. Actually, I don't see anywhere but grant-funded specialty hospitals using RFID for counts. Now, I can see RFIDs in instruments being used to streamline the cleaning/processing/sterilization process - take a basin full of instruments, wave them one by one under the wand, and sort them into the proper sets. That could hold some promise and might get the process of getting it into the OR started.
Re:A better idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
Riiiight. What is cheaper? Implementing this system to make sure no surgical implements are left inside a patient or paying a MEGA lawsuit when something is left inside a patient (and the resulting negative publicity in the local press)?
Also, we (I work in healthcare) are seeing a bigger push for an asset tracking system that would be able to instantly display the location of certain "assets" that like to disappear in the hospital. Not stuff that is being stolen but items that are taken to a room and used and the next person who wants to use that device can not find it. An example would be: "Show me the current location of all of our infusion pumps."
The assets we want to track would have a small tag attached. A wireless (not necessarily 802.11) infrastructure would be able to use triangulation to determine the location of devices and display them on a floor plan. The bigger shops already have this. Implementing this service is on our To Do list.
Things that A) improve patient safety or B) save us money stand a very strong chance of getting implemented.