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http://news.yahoo.com/51-years...found-164436702.html

 

CREVE COEUR, Mo. (AP) — Fifty-one years ago, Arthur Lampitt of Granite City, Illinois, smashed his 1963 Thunderbird into a truck. This week during surgery in suburban St. Louis, a 7-inch turn signal lever from that T-Bird was removed from his left arm.

 

Dr. Timothy Lang removed the lever Wednesday during a 45-minute operation. Lampitt, now 75, is recovering at home.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1EOtGa6 ) reports that the accident broke Lampitt's hip, drawing attention away from the arm, which healed.

A decade or so ago, his arm set off a metal detector at a courthouse. An X-ray showed a slender object the length of a pencil, but since it caused no pain or hardship, Lampitt was told to let it be.

He was moving concrete blocks a few weeks ago when the arm began to hurt for the first time.

"Everything was fine until it started to get bigger," Lampitt's wife, Betty, said. "The arm started bulging."

 

Lampitt decided to have surgery. He initially wasn't sure what was in the arm. He wondered if perhaps a medical instrument had been left during the emergency room visit in 1963.

He unearthed a collection of old photos of the mangled Thunderbird taken by a friend at the scene. He noticed the metal blinker lever was missing from the left side of the steering column. He figured that was it, and surgery at City Place Surgery Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri, confirmed it.

"Seven inches long," Lang told Betty.

"Oh, my God," Betty said.

Lang said a protective pocket grew around the lever.

"We see all kinds of foreign objects like nails or pellets, but usually not this large, usually not a turn signal from a 1963 T-Bird," Lang said. "Something this large often gets infected."

Lampitt wasn't sure what he'd do with the lever — maybe make a key chain out of it.

"We'll figure out something, I am sure," he said.

___

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com


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"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality." Edgar Allan Poe.

Last edited by Seven
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Well, that is at least one foreign object that was not an instrument inadvertently left behind by a surgeon.

 

http://www.webmd.com/news/2013...d-in-patients-report

 

"There are many different types of tools that have been left behind during a surgery. Common instruments are needles, knife blades, safety pins, scalpels, clamps, scissors, sponges, towels, and electrosurgical adapters. Also retained are tweezers, forceps, suction tips and tubes, scopes, ultrasound tissue disruptors, asepto bulbs,cryotomes and cutting laser guides, and measuring devices. The single most common left behind object is a sponge."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...surgical_instruments

 

 

 

Many years ago I was involved in a seeing a patient who was taken to surgery for what appeared to be a brain tumor or lesion. During surgery the surgeon kept finding small pieces of rusty brown material that looked for all the world like "rust".  At the center of the "lesion" he found a small lump of hard rusty metal, which he removed.  After healing from the surgery and questioning the patient, he remembered being "stuck" in the head with a small penknife when he was a kid, but it healed up and he had not sequelae. Sixty years later the tip of the blade, which evidently had broken off had almost rusted away. The human body is a n amazing piece of equipment.

There are numerous sa***uards in place to prevent "leaving" objects in the body during surgery.  Every piece of gauze, needle, and tool is supposed to be counted, recounted, and then checked again before closure in each case. Any discrepancy must be addressed before closing up the patient.  You cannot say it does not happen, because there are obviously cases of it occurring, but there are sa***uards in place to try and prevent it.

Last edited by teyates

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