KARACHI, June 2: Following the death of a 40-year-old woman after a sponge had been left in her abdomen last month, some surgeons of the Civil Hospital, Karachi, have put in place a system in which the number of swabs used during a surgical operation is monitored.

According to a well-placed source, the surgeons who had devised the system had done so entirely voluntarily. At the same time, there were surgeons who went about their work as if nothing had happened at all.

The source was of the opinion that to prevent recurrence of similar episodes, it was necessary that the issue of responsibility of keeping the swabs’ count be settled once and for all. Neither the doctors nor the operation theatre staff were ready to shoulder the responsibility.

He said some of the hospital’s operation theatres now had blackboards on which the number of swabs issued during a surgery were scribbled.

“The blackboard is wiped clean only when all the swabs issued during an operation are returned.”

A doctor, on condition of anonymity, told Dawn on Monday that in the western countries the scrub nurses were held responsible for ensuring that all the swabs used during a surgical operation were removed from a patient’s body. “A scrub nurse issues the stitches needed at the end of an operation only when all the swabs have been accounted for.”

He was of the view that the surgeons were so busy during the operation and needed to concentrate on the job at hand so much that they could not be expected to keep the count of swabs and also the surgical instruments used.

The doctors pointed out that not all the operation theatres of the hospital had put in place a system to reconcile the number of swabs used in an operation. The doctor said many people, instead of drawing appropriate lessons from the ugly episode, were busy in using it to settle old scores.

“You see not all doctors mean well all the time. There are people who are making fun of the operating team involved in the unfortunate incident.”