Retained surgical sponges are serious adverse events that can result in negative patient outcomes. The primary method of prevention is the sponge count. Searching for sponges to reconcile counts can result in inefficient use of OR time. The purpose of this descriptive study was to estimate the cost of nonproductive OR time (ie, time spent not moving forward with the surgical procedure) spent reconciling surgical sponge counts and the cost of using radiography to rule out the presence of retained sponges. We included 13,322 patient surgeries during a nine-month period. Perioperative personnel required from one to 90 minutes of additional time to reconcile each of 212 incorrect/unresolved counts. The total annualized cost of OR time spent searching for sponges and ruling out the presence of potentially retained sponges using radiography was $219,056. These costs should be included in comprehensive cost analyses when considering alternatives to supplement the surgical count.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 December 2015.
All research outputs
#3,374,556
of 26,877,152 outputs
Outputs from AORN Journal
#49
of 2,208 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#42,823
of 295,880 outputs
Outputs of similar age from AORN Journal
#1
of 51 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,877,152 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,208 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 295,880 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 51 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
