A rising number of medical foreign objects, including wire cutters, scalpel blades and drill bits, have been left inside hospital patients after surgery in England, new figures reveal.
Blunders involving a “foreign object accidentally left in body during surgical and medical care” led to 291 “finished consultant episodes” in 2021-2022, official data shows.
The NHS Digital data does not make clear when or where the patient had their initial operation, or whether it was on the NHS or in a private hospital. Sometimes, such medical errors are not discovered for weeks, months or years after the event.
Analysis by PA Media found that 291 cases was the highest annual total recorded in more than 20 years. It comes as the NHS faces intense pressure and is caring for more patients than ever before.
Last year’s record high was more than double the lowest total over the last two decades, when 138 episodes were recorded by clinicians in 2003-2004. There were 156 foreign object cases in 2001-2002.
Objects left inside patients included swabs, gauze and even surgical devices, including drill bits. Last year, the average age of patients with something left inside them after an operation was 57. A broad age range was affected by the errors, from babies to patients aged over 90.
There are strict procedures in hospitals to prevent such blunders, including checklists and the repeated counting of surgical tools. Leaving an object inside a patient after surgery is classed as a “never event” by the NHS – meaning the incident is so serious it should never have happened.
Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Never events are called that because they are serious incidents that are entirely preventable because the hospital or clinic has systems in place to prevent them from happening.
“The serious physical and psychological effects they cause can stay with a patient for the rest of their life, and that should never happen to anyone who seeks treatment from the NHS.
“While we fully appreciate the crisis facing the NHS, never events simply should not occur if the preventive measures are implemented.”
A 49-year-old woman from east London said she had “lost hope” after part of a surgical blade was left inside her following an operation to remove her ovaries in 2016.
“When I woke up, I felt something in my belly,” she said. “The knife they used to cut me broke and they left part in my belly.”
It was left inside her for five days, leading to an additional two-week hospital stay.
Emmalene Bushnell and Kriya Hurley, of the law firm Leigh Day, which represented the woman, said: “Unfortunately, we continue to see cases of retained objects post-surgery resulting in patients being readmitted to hospital, having a second surgery, suffering sepsis or infection, or experiencing a fistula or bowel obstruction, visceral perforation and psychological harm.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff, incidents like these are rare.
“However, when they do happen, the NHS is committed to learning from them to improve care for future patients.”
