When Healthcare Makes You Sick: What surgeons leave behind costs some patients dearly
March 20, 2013Peter Eisler, USA TODAY – March 8, 2013. More than a dozen times a day, doctors sew up patients with sponges and other supplies mistakenly left inside. The mistake costs some victims their lives. “I still get wicked pains in my stomach from the scar tissue, and the scars on the outside are so bad, I can’t ever go swimming or go to the beach or anywhere I’d take my shirt off,” he says. “I’ve always been a happy guy, but every day is a struggle now. Some days, I just can’t let go of it.” Over the next month, her stomach grew so swollen that she looked pregnant again. By the sixth week, her bowels had shut down entirely. Parks, an Air Force major, staggered in to see her doctor, who sent her immediately to the emergency room.
Erica Parks knew something wasn’t right in her belly when she left the Alabama hospital that performed her cesarean section in the spring of 2010. X-rays showed that a surgical sponge the size of a washcloth had been left in Parks’ abdomen. After a six-hour emergency surgery to untangle the infected mass from her intestine, she needed nearly three weeks of hospitalization.
- Some of these victims lose parts of their intestines; some don’t survive.
- Hospitalizations involving a lost sponge or instrument average more than $60,000.
- New sponge-tracking systems typically add just $8 to $12 to an operation’s cost.