| |January 20199WITH THE ADVENT OF ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY APPLIED IN ALL SEGMENTS OF HEALTH CARE, OPTICAL BARCODING HAS BEEN THE PRIMARY METHOD OF TRACKING MEDICAL SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENTbefore emergency surgeries. There are cases when the number of items used can exceed 200 per patient. When staff suspect an RSI-related complication, the immediate step is to subject the patient to an X-ray, a rather expensive measure. Even in an X-ray film, opaque items like scissors, clamps or needles can be more readily determined than soft items like swabs and sponges. In the wake of such incidents; Nothing Left Behind makes several recommendations.The most followed RSI prevention system begins with sponge accounting. This is a tedious process where a nurse manually counts the number of cotton sponges, swabs, and/or towels used before the procedure and later counter checks the amount of bloodied sponges and swabs post-procedure. This accounting is done at every step of the procedure--from when the surgeon closes the body cavity and the wound to until the final sutures are in place. Any discrepancy in these numbers indicates an item may still lie within the patient's body. This process, though widely practiced, has room for error. Manual counts leave a risk of losing count or miscalculation both prior and after the procedure. There is also the awkward handling of the bloodied cotton swabs and multiple other items.What Intelligent Swabs Do BetterWith the advent of electronic technology applied in all segments of health care, optical barcoding has been the primary method of tracking medical supplies and equipment. However, barcodes alone have revealed sizable limitations, specifically being unable to detect if anything has been left inside the body. Further, items cannot be scanned if the barcodes have been obscured by blood during surgery By contrast, an RFID system has proven to be a foolproof method of both counting and detecting sponges. In RFID-based solution, an RF chip is embedded into the fabric of the sponges. A wand, connected to a detection console, is used to scan the patient. If a sponge is detected, the console triggers an alarm. A similar RF mat is also available, which accelerates the scanning process without manual wanding. The sponge bins are also embedded with RFID reader, which automatically counts the used sponges. RFID monitoring ensures all quantities of sponges and other items can be monitored before and after surgeries in real time, and Nothing Left Behind has promoted this technology as a cornerstone of their global initiative.RSI remains a major cause of surgical complica-tions--and accompanying legal liabilities--for hos-pitals around the world. RFID and other `smart' tech-nologies are rapidly proving to be the most effective solution to protect patient safety. C IDr. Sreeram Srinivasan
< Page 8 | Page 10 >