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Excerpt from Discovery Health Channel’s "When Surgical Tools Get Left Behind" Click Here to Play Video

SSince the introduction of codified AORN sponge counting recommendations in 1976, little has been introduced by way of adjunct technology to assist nursing staffs in performing their manual counting procedures and in reducing instances of lost or retained sponges. According to Harvard University researchers, 88% of retained sponge cases falsely recorded a “correct” manual count of sponges at the end of the procedure, leading staffs to unknowingly leave behind sponges in patients.

In 2006, SurgiCount Medical was proud to introduce the world’s first computer assisted adjunct counting technology designed specifically to address the true cause of retained items – false positive counts.

The SurgiCount Safety-Sponge™ System, a patented FDA 510k approved turn key solution to retained surgical sponges. The system is comprised of surgical sponges and towels affixed with an inseparable two-dimensional data matrix bar code and a SurgiCounter scanner to record each sponge before and after an operation. Because all sponges are identified with a unique code, they can not be counted twice. At the end of a procedure, the system can either immediately produce a printed report or the information can be imported into a database program. The SurgiCount Safety-Sponge™ System is also the only retained sponge system to offer complete sponge inventory tracking, reporting features and integration with a medical facility’s IT system.

SurgiCount Medical is committed to reducing sponge counting errors and improving the level of patient safety in surgical environments by establishing its Safety-Sponge™ System as the standard technology to compliment traditional sponge counting methods.

SurgiCount Medical is a subsidiary of Patient Safety Technologies, Inc.