Medical malpractice is defined as an act by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of care in the medical community. Because of the substandard care, the patient is injured.
And this includes incidents where surgeons leave behind objects in a patient during surgery.
It is estimated that there are 4,000 cases in the United States every year of “retained surgical items.” About 2/3 of these items are sponges. Other items left behind include clamps, scalpels and even scissors.
Some hospitals use manual counting where the medical team counts and then recounts the items used in the procedure to make sure they are all accounted for.
A few hospitals have implemented electronic tracking systems using bar code technology. At the end of the surgery, a detector alerts the surgical team if any sponges remain inside the patient. However, only about 1% of hospitals are currently using this method.
Here is a recent NY Times article on this topic: