Posted on 12/17/2002 1:59:59 PM PST by Dallas
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) -
It took an airport metal detector to give a Canadian woman a clue to why she was suffering from persistent stomach aches four months after having abdominal surgery.
Despite the detector's beep, airport security guards in Regina, Saskatchewan, were unable to find any metal on her body before the woman's October flight to Calgary, Alberta.
Several days later the woman had an X-ray.
It showed a 12-inch-long, 2-inch-wide surgical retractor, used to hold incisions open, had been left in her abdomen after surgery four months earlier at the Regina General Hospital.
The woman now wants compensation from the surgeon and the hospital, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported on Monday.
"I would think that it would be an understatement to say surprise, probably more like horror, that this surgical device was left inside her abdominal cavity," the woman's lawyer, Jeff Scott, told the CBC.
After surgery, medical staff are required to account for each piece of equipment used, said an official from the Regina health authority, which oversees the hospital.
"Systems are never perfect and, as always, we strive to do the best we can," Brian Laursen, the senior vice-president of the health authority, told the CBC.
"But inevitably, in any system, there tends to be the occasional failure," he said.
The woman had surgery to remove the retractor a day after her X-ray. She told the CBC she is still in pain.
She can ask to keep the retractor as a souvenir.
"Inventory sheets?"
"Doc, unless you count all the pieces before you cut, and then count 'em again before and after you sew up...how do you know you've accounted for all the tools you used on the job?"
The doc was rather taken aback, and decided that my friend had a good point. He now prepares an inventory sheet of (a) what he starts with, (b) what he SHOULD have left immediately before starting sewup, and (c) what he should have left at the end of sewup. The sheets are cross-checked by the senior nurse and kept on file.
Those detectors send out a signal that causes the anti-shoplifting devices to "resonate" and transmit a reply signal. She probably has something in her purse that does the same, setting off the the detectors.
Similar technology is used for "toll tags" (or "EZ-pass" in the NY/NJ area), and for automatic gate openers at some apartment complexes. It might be something like that.
Yeah your right, I had looked over the fact that this was in Canada. In that case I guess this is just one of those things.
My 800 mhz. Nextel radio/cell phone will set them off. Apparently the radio is constantly transmitting a signal to keep in touch with the system. That signal must be doing it.
"We strive to the the best we can." Sounds like a rental car purchase. I think I would prefer a Hertz huckster to operate on me. Hey, don't knock it. OJ is pretty good with a knife.
BAD FOCAULT!!!!!!
I wonder what Winona Ryder was doing in Boston last week.
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