Retained surgical items are cited as a “Never Event” by the Joint Commission, meaning they should never happen. Today, surgical sponges are the #1 retained item across operating rooms, occurring 11 times per day. A patient that leaves the operating room has a 5% chance of death, 17% chance of permanent injury, and a 78% chance of temporary injury. Operating rooms are hectic, staff workload is high, and interruptions are constant. Retained sponge cases occur today because hospitals don’t have a system that suits their needs.
Our device, Spongetrak™, is a low-cost innovation on the existing hospital sponge management system. We have worked with over 80 operating room clinicians and an industry-leading hospital network to develop an easy-to-use, intuitive, system that separates and organizes sponges used in intense surgical cases. During our time with these clinicians, we observed various OR procedures and received real-time feedback on our device. Spongetrak™ is designed by clinicians, for clinicians. One of the greatest frustrations we hear about existing devices is that the “current sponge bags don’t differentiate between sponge type, and the racks don’t hold as many bags as we need.”
Working under the guidance of clinicians, Spongetrak™ was designed with a color-coded rack and bag system to identify and separate Raytec and Laparotomy sponges, so that even during the most intense procedures, the correct sponges go in the correct place. Additionally, our rack holds up to 20 bags that live on (180-degree) swivel arms so they can be easily cataloged at the end of the procedure. Finally, our bags are designed to hold the various sponge types in numbered pouches, so no pouch is double-filled, nor left unfilled.
Our goal with Spongetrak™ is to deliver the easiest, most intuitive, and most-effective sponge management system for clinicians and patients today, and we believe we have done just that.
Spongetrak™ – Spongetraking you can count on.