Routine X-Ray reveals eight-inch long forceps left inside patient’s body from operation weeks before
Clinical Negligence News : 15 August 2012
A man at a hospital in Kent needed emergency surgery after medics failed to realise that they had left a pair of forceps inside his body during an appendix operation.
The eight-inch long surgical implements were discovered weeks after they had been left inside the patient when he returned to the ward for a routine X-ray.
It was revealed yesterday bu East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust yesterday that an investigation into the incident had been launched.
Chief nurse at East Kent Hospitals, Julie Pearce, said “These are events that shouldn’t happen and happen very rarely. In the last three years, we’ve only had one of those events and each year we do about 90,000 surgical procedures.”
It is standard practice in hospitals for all surgical tools to be counted before and after an operation in order to identify if any are missing.
Ms Pearce, also Director of Quality and Operations stated, “What normally happens is that if the count doesn’t match up, an X-ray is done while the patient is still in theatre. In this case, staff hadn’t completely adhered to policy. They had scanned the patient’s abdomen, but hadn’t done a full X-ray.”
The incident, which took place in April, is one of three similar occurences at hospitals in the county in the last three years.
In one incident recorded by the Medway NHS Foundation Trust, a drill bit broke off in a patient’s femur. Similarly, another patient had a small fragment of a drill left inside the palm of their hand.
In both of these cases it was decided that the drill bits should remain inside the patients.
Vice Chairman of the Patients’ Association, Dr Mike Smith, said “If the dangers of going in again to remove it are greater than leaving it there, that’s something that needs to be assessed at the time. But whenever there are humans involved something must go wrong - obviously if it could be avoided completely that would be ideal.”