Tagging surgical sponges means patients don't go home with unwanted extras

It appears in as many as 1 in every 10,000 operations in the U.S. involving an open cavity, something inadvertently gets left behind after the patient had been closed up.

This is more common in emergency operations and accounts for a total of 1,500 operations each year.

As a rule 60% of the objects mislaid are sponges which can remain undetected for many years until something such as a serious infection develops which can be fatal.

No matter how rigorous medical staff are at accounting for equipment used, bits still go missing.

Now a new type of tagged surgical sponge has been invented which should go a long way to rectify the potentially lethal problem.

The device uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) and when medical staff wave a wand over the patient, the wand detects any sponges that are left inside.

When Dr. Alex Macario and a team at Stanford University, California, USA, conducted a small study using the device it proved to be effective for 100% of the time.