American journal of surgery
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Multicenter Study
Natural history of retained surgical items supports the need for team training, early recognition, and prompt retrieval.
Unintentionally retained items feature prominently among surgical "never events." Our knowledge of these rare occurrences, including natural history and intraoperative safety omission or variance (SOV) profile, is limited. We sought to bridge existing knowledge gaps by presenting a secondary analysis of a multicenter study focused on these important aspects of retained surgical items (RSIs). ⋯ The finding that most operations complicated by RSIs were found to involve team/system errors and 2 or more SOVs emphasizes the importance of team safety training. The observation that early RSI removal minimizes patient morbidity and symptoms highlights the need for prompt RSI identification and treatment. The incidence of inflammation-related findings increases significantly with longer retention periods.