It is said that in every 15,000 surgical procedures, there is one instance wherein the doctors might have accidentally left a surgical tool or anything inside the person’s body. The odds are low but it happens. Especially when it’s a piece of white gauze that was left, it’s almost impossible to detect it when it has already been soaked in blood. It’s quite risky when things like this happen because the patient may die of infection.

A small study conducted by Dr. Alex Macario of Stanford University School of Medicine and his team shows that the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags can prevent such incidents of surgical errors from happening. He noted that their devices, a coin-sized RFID tag and a 25-cm detector, were 100 % effective in detecting the 10-cm wide medical sponges where the tags were placed; however, they have not figured out yet whether the body can block signals from the RFID tags or not. ClearCount Medical Solutions is now developing the RFID system that can be used in surgical procedures.

By Khristine