Leaving a foreign object, like a surgical sponge, inside of a patient is an inexcusable medical error that places the patient's life at risk. If you or a loved one is a victim of medical malpractice due to an object being left in the body following surgery, you should contact a lawyer to discuss your legal rights.

We represent patients who suffer serious injuries when hospitals leave foreign objects in the body during surgery. Those patients are at risk for deadly infections, require unnecessary surgery, and they incur excessive medical bills.

The reason is simple and logical: it is a never event.  There is no legitimate reason why a patient should leave the operating room with a surgical sponge, towel, or instrument left inside her body.  These events should never happen.  They only happen when someone is not being careful.  In most cases responsibility falls with the nurse for failing to properly account for each sponge placed in the patient's body.

It is a basic principle of surgical nursing that prior to surgery the nurse must have an accurate count of the number of sponges in the surgical field.  The nurse must keep an accurate count of the number of sponges placed in the patient's body during surgery and then count each sponge removed.  Before the surgeon sews up the patient, it is the nurse's job to tell the surgeon if a sponge remains in the patient's body.