Left Behind.
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https://www.hdc.org.nz/media/6592/21hdc01479mediarelease.pdf
Auckland District Health Board (DHB) (now Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland) breached the Code of Health & Disability Services Consumer’s Rights (the Code) when a surgical instrument was left in a woman’s abdomen after a Caesarean section (C- section).
The woman experienced severe pains in her abdomen after a scheduled C-section at Auckland City Hospital. This led her to visit her GP several times, as well as the emergency department at the hospital, until the instrument was discovered on an abdominal CT scan.
An Alexis wound retractor (AWR) – a soft tubal instrument about the size of a dinner plate, used for holding open a surgical wound – was removed from her abdomen 18 months after her C-section.
Our guys used the Alexis all the time. I wonder if @bachophile has any experience with it.
***Gross surgical stuff***
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How could the doctors/nurses "forget" about something that big?
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If the instrument count is wrong, we X-ray the patient in the OR to see if is indeed inside. Often that helps when something has fallen into some hidden crevice, like behind the spleen or under the liver somewhere. More common are pads and sponges getting left but they also have a radio opaque stripe visible on X-ray. So all in all really not that common anymore.
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Is the alexis radio-opaque? I'd imagine that it is.
OTOH, it sounds like it was never accounted for, or noted, as it was inserted, so no one thought of it as they were closing. I'm trying to remember the size our OBs used during sections - I don't think it was all that big.
It's a great retractor - at least when they remember to take it out.
As an aside, I remember being told that some places (Mayo?) take a post-op x-ray on everyone before they leave the OR.
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If the instrument count is wrong, we X-ray the patient in the OR to see if is indeed inside. Often that helps when something has fallen into some hidden crevice, like behind the spleen or under the liver somewhere. More common are pads and sponges getting left but they also have a radio opaque stripe visible on X-ray. So all in all really not that common anymore.
@bachophile said in Left Behind.:
something has fallen into some hidden crevice, like behind the spleen or under the liver somewhere.
Sorry, but that just struck me as funny. Never really though about it. I just have this image of you, or @George-K or @Jolly with your hands in someones body searching for a lost instrument. 555
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@bachophile said in Left Behind.:
something has fallen into some hidden crevice, like behind the spleen or under the liver somewhere.
Sorry, but that just struck me as funny. Never really though about it. I just have this image of you, or @George-K or @Jolly with your hands in someones body searching for a lost instrument. 555
@taiwan_girl said in Left Behind.:
I just have this image of you, or @George-K or @Jolly with your hands in someones body searching for a lost instrument
Never done that. @bachophile , to be sure, has.
Well, not "lost" actually, but just taking stuff out.
