title: Three years evaluation of retained foreign bodies after surgery in Iran.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Medical errors such as retained foreign bodies (RFB) during surgery are not well studied. To define risk factors associated with this type of error, we performed retrospective study.
  
  
  METHODS
  We reviewed medical records for unintentional foreign object remaining in the body during surgery such as gender, age, surgery ward, and incident reports referred to several forensic medicine administrations as well as adverse effects of retained foreign bodies and methods for detection of them over a 3-years period from January 2008 through May 2011.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirty eight patients were involved in the study to have retained foreign bodies (73% sponges and 27% other instruments including 7 (18.42%) cases of other bandages, 2 cases (5.26%) of scissor and 1 case (2.63%) of forceps). The general surgery ward was most commonly involved (47%) followed by the gynecology surgery ward (34%). Men (58%) were more involved with RFB than women (42%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Considering the most frequent type of retained foreign bodies and also more frequent involved surgery wards besides detection methods for RFB, a mixed of preventing protocols such as regular counting of devices, post-operative X-ray with radiopaque markers and exact evaluation of surgery site should be employed to reduce the occurrence of retained foreign bodies and its complications.
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran and Member of Gastroenterohepatology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zarenezhad
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Saeed
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gholamzadeh
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Arya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hedjazi
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Kamran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Soltani
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Jaber
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gharehdaghi
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Masoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghadipasha
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Shiraz and Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Bandar Abbas, Iran.
authors.forename: Seyyed Mohammad Vahid
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Hosseini
authors.affiliation: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zare
keywords: Medical error; Retained foreign body; Surgery