Well, the surgery’s over and you can look forward to just getting on with healing and getting better, right? Well, you’d think so but the alarming fact is that in many cases the healing process takes a lot longer to set in because many surgeries sometimes allow for extra souvenirs to be left inside the patients.
Items like fractured catheters, screws, broken blades and even full scalpels are left behind inside patients who think the worst is over. In many cases, the problem isn’t resolved until the patient goes in for follow-up exams or for a pain-related check-up and an X-ray will help to pinpoint the cause of the patient’s pain. There are hundreds of patients every year who find out that they have more than scars for souvenirs from operations they’ve had performed on them, no matter what type of affordable health insurance they possess.
Silence can be Deadly
What’s even worse though is that many health workers don’t say anything about the broken devices sending the patients home with medical debris in their bodies that can easily migrate to other parts of the body and cause problems. For example, even small metal pieces in the body can overheat during MRI procedures and scorch patient tissue from the inside.
Since 2003, there have been 72 deaths and 4,700 injuries associated with medical debris being left in the bodies of patients, according to MSNBC. And because the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t actively monitor this aspect of the medical profession, it’s a purely voluntary matter of disclosure. That means that the incidence level is probably much higher than has already been reported. In many cases, it’s not so much that items have been unknowingly left behind.
That’s part of the scary problem. In many of these cases, the doctors are very well aware that the items have been left inside, but choose to either make no attempt to remove them or fail to get them out when they try. Some doctors don’t want to worry their patients by telling them – while others stay silent for their own selfish fear of legal consequences being brought against them.



