In new findings on how often treatment failure occur during surgery, researchers said that errors were made during almost 50 percent of the surgeries they analyzed.
The errors included drug branding errors, imprecise dosing, drug authentication mistakes, and/or failing to accurately treat developments in a patient's vital signs during the operation.
According to the Harvard researchers, generally, a medication error or unfavorable drug instance was recorded in 124 of 277 operations. Of the 3,675 treatment administrations (most patients had more than one drug during the operation), 193 medication glitch and unfavorable drug events were registered. And close to 80 percent of those instances were known to have been curable.
The recommendation stems from the in-house efforts of Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital to quantify and address drug-error threat during the operation.
Study author Dr. Karen Nanji, an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School in Boston said that it is the first massive review at medication flaws in the time directly before, during and immediately after the operation, she even added that while there is plenty of room for development, the results are not shocking.
All medicines and medication errors were documented (or extracted from medical records) from the time a patient goes into a pre-operative area until they were out of the operating room and in either a recovery room or an intensive care unit.
The result; more than 5 percent of the time, treatment medicines were given by mistake or negative drug instances were also recorded.
Nearly two-thirds of the drug glitch were classified as "serious," while the 2 percent were treated as life-threatening (though there was no fatalities recorded as a result). The errors that was left were considered as "significant."
Furthermore, according to Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn., the consciousness about the problem is also where all resolutions begin.
Katz added that it all means that human conduct cannot be the only safeguard against error. Instead, humans need a multi-layered protection system, involving cautious humans backing one another up, and technological systems backing up the humans.
