Analyzing 212 surgical adverse events and 130 close calls from root-cause analysis teams and incident reports, researchers determined that the incidence of reported adverse events was 1.8 per 10,000 cases for ophthalmology and 1.2 per 10,000 cases for orthopedics.
The top root causes included communication problems (21.0 percent) and time-out problems (17.6 percent). Wrong side and wrong patient were the two most common adverse events, accounting for 31.1 percent and 26.4 percent of events respectively.
Read Archives of Surgery’s study on incorrect procedure rates.
