The amount of deaths and complications was reduced by mote than a third when surgeons and their associates went by a checklist in the operating room, such as marking part of the patient’s body where it will be operated on, conversing about any patient allergies and making sure that all surgical items are checked. This was all determined through a project that involved eight countries over a period of a year.
Apparently, surgeons are now realizing what airline pilots having been doing for years: That a person’s brain can not remember all things, so it’s much more beneficial to concentrate on the perplexing problems, and have a handy checklist for simple but important things that need to be checked routinely.
There are more than 234 million surgeries done each year in the world. Between 3 and 17 percent of these results in major complications, like an infection that is life threatening. The average complication due to surgery can cost $12,000 or more to treat, but according to studies performed during the past 15 years, about half of these are preventable.
A checklist appears to be an automatic must, but it is obvious that it needs to be used in more operating rooms. Now that the use of a checklist has proven to save lives, it will most likely be adopted by more surgeons.
This checklist, developed by the World Health Organization, idea could have huge financial benefits, because it is not costly or too technical. Calculations by the authors revealed that the U.S. alone could save as much as $15 to $25 billion a year in the amount of money it costs to treat preventable complications, if every U.S. operating room followed the surgical checklist.
During the one -year pilot study using 7,600 patients, the hospitals observed that the amount of substantial complications went from 11 to 7 percent. Also, inpatient deaths fell by more than 40 percent all together.