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Comment on "Incorrect Surgical Procedures Within and Outside of the Operating Room"

George C. Velmahos, MD, PhD, MSEd

Arch Surg. 2009;144(11):1034.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The initiatives taken by the VHA Medical Centers toward patient safety are many and laudable. In this study, a distinguished group of authors reports on the adverse events and close calls recorded from 2001 to 2006 in the VHA database. The results uncover the most frequently involved departments (ophthalmology and orthopedics), the most frequently encountered adverse events (wrong eye implant and unavailable orthopedic implant), the most harmful adverse events (wrong-side thoracentesis by pulmonary medicine and wrong-site operations by different specialists), and the most common root cause of the problem (communication). The authors conclude that earlier communication will prevent surgical adverse events, although this is merely a hypothesis and not a data-driven conclusion.

The science of reporting adverse events in the era of legal liability, pay for performance, and Internet-driven public pressure is imperfect. Capturing, recording, and analyzing these complications obeys a few rules and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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RELATED ARTICLE

Incorrect Surgical Procedures Within and Outside of the Operating Room
Julia Neily, Peter D. Mills, Noel Eldridge, Edward J. Dunn, Carol Samples, James R. Turner, Audrey Revere, Ralph G. DePalma, and James P. Bagian
Arch Surg. 2009;144(11):1028-1034.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT