The Beeping Sponge to Remind Surgeons not to Leave It Inside

Scientists have developed a new chip related to Radio Frequency ID (RFID) devices that is going to prevent surgeons from leaving sponges inside the body of a patient after the operation is completed.

This is an extremely useful chip, as many sponges are used during surgical interventions and there has been reported a high number of cases in which doctors forgot about sponges and left them inside after closing the operated area of the body. For instance, during an abdominal intervention about 50 sponges are used by a surgeon.

Though surgeons count the sponges used for an intervention when starting and after the operation is finished, there still is an increased risk of leaving some of the sponges behind. Besides the fact that leaving sponges inside an opened body is medically unethical, the event may lead to serious health problems, complications, infections and even death.

The chip that is going to be used from now on by surgeons is similar to the chip attached to clothes in clothing stores in order to prevent thieves. We all know that in such stores, clothes have attached a small device that will beep if not removed from the clothing article before we leave the place. The "beeping" sponge will act similarly: the device is going to be introduced in the sponge material and a signal detector in form of a wand will be waved over the patients' body by surgeons or nurses. If left inside, the sponge will signal and draw the medical staff's attention. The chip is going to function on radio frequency detection.

The research was carried out by a medical team from the Stanford University School of Medicine led by Alex Macario, a physician and professor of anesthesia, who stated for CNN: "We need a system that is really fail-safe; where, regardless, of how people use this technology, the patient doesn't leave the operating room with a retained foreign body." Tests of sponges with such chips have been made on 8 volunteers and the sponge was detected by the wand in no more than 3 seconds.

However, the consequences deriving from a tagged sponge left inside a patient's body are unknown. "For example, if the scan is performed incorrectly (e.g., the wand scan is performed farther away than a few inches from the skin or the device does not cover the entire surface area of the surgical site), retained sponges can be missed. Retained sponges could also be missed, even if the technical detection works accurately, if the scan were performed too early, such as if an additional sponge were placed in the wound to help with closure after the final RFID scan had been performed," members of the scientific team that carried out the research acknowledged.