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Cite this article:
Alain Chichom Mefire, Robert Tchounzou, Marc Leroy Guifo, Marcus Fokou, Jean Jacques Pagbe, Arthur Essomba, Eimo Elisee Malonga. Retained sponge after abdominal surgery: experience from a third world country. The Pan African Medical Journal. 2009;2:10 Key words: gossypiboma,abdominal Permanent link: http://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/content/article/2/10/full Received: 18/04/2009 - Accepted: 21/06/2009 - Published: 05/07/2009 © Alain Chichom Mefire et al. The Pan African Medical Journal - ISSN 1937-8688. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Retained sponge after abdominal surgery: experience from a third world country
Alain Chichom Mefire1&, Robert Tchounzou1, Marc Leroy Guifo2, Marcus Fokou3, Jean Jacques Pagbe3, Arthur Essomba4, Eimo Elisée Malonga4
1Faculty of health sciences, University of Buéa and regional hospital, Limbé, Cameroon, 2General surgery unit, university teaching hospital, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 3General and cardiovascular surgery unit, general and reference hospital, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 4 General surgery unit, central hospital, Yaoundé, Cameroon.
&Corresponding author
Dr Alain Chichom Mefire, General and digestive surgery unit, central hospital, Yaoundé, Cameroon, P.O. box 25526, Yaoundé, Cameroon; Phone number: (237) 77 53 05 32.
Background
Retained abdominal sponge after surgery is a quite rare condition which can have heavy medico-legal consequences; its frequency is generally underestimated. Few reports of these conditions are available in African environment with specific technical and medico-legal background. We present our local experience of retained sponges after abdominal surgery and review current literature.
Method
A retrospective analysis of the medical files of 14 consecutive patients with a retained surgical sponge after abdominal and urological surgery.
Results
The incidence was 1every 677 abdominal operations; no metallic foreign body described, only sponges; the female sex predominated with 10/14 patients. 85.71% of retained sponge occurred after an emergency procedure and 64.28% were gynecological or obstetrical procedures.
Most cases presented as intestinal obstruction, localized persistent pain or abdominal mass and pre-operative diagnosis could be done only in 28.57% of cases. A falsely correct sponge count was reported in 71.42% of cases
92.85% of patients were re-operated and the morbidity was low; no death was reported.
None of our cases ended in a medico-legal claim despite proper counseling.
Conclusion
The incidence of retained sponge might be significantly higher in an environment with reduced medico-legal threat; most cases of retained sponges are still related to human errors; the incidence will probably be reduced by a greater awareness about the condition.
