Technology Mishaps Cause One-fourth of Surgical Errors-Study

Jojy Cheriyan MD;MPH-July 27,2013

Technological innovation has resulted in revolutionary changes in current surgical procedures and widely used for enhancing precision , reducing operating time and minimizing human errors. But, what if technology causes errors? This is repairable if the error occurs in managing a machine, but not while managing a human life.

A previous research suggested that medical errors affect up to 16 percent of hospital patients and that about half of these errors are associated with surgery.

The new study published online on July 25th 2013,by the British Medical Journal -Quality & Safety,reports that one in four operating room errors are caused by technology and equipment problem. The study also found that a pre-operative check list could reduce the errors to half , if properly enforced.

Researchers of this study reviewed 28 published studies on operating room errors and found that technology/equipment issues were cited in about 15 percent of malpractice claims. An average of 2.4 errors occurred in each procedure, and technology/equipment issues accounted for 23.5 percent of these errors. Communication failure was the cause for 8 percent of the errors.

Three studies that researches reviewed found that using an equipment/technology checklist before surgery could halve the error rate.

The authors of this study concluded that -"while technological advances have improved the quality of surgery and patients' chances of survival, the increasing use of technology in all surgical specialties may also increase the complexity of the surgical process, and may represent an increasing propensity to error from equipment failure".

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