The Royal Wolverhampton Hospital NHS Trust

Vitiligo is the most common depigmentation disorder affecting around 1% of the population worldwide. Fifty two percent of patients develop vitiligo before the age of 20 and around 80% develop vitiligo before the age of 30 years old.1 Vitiligo often presents in childhood and tends to be a lifelong disease, requiring prolonged courses of phototherapy.
Currently no national or international registry for patients with vitiligo exists. Individual dermatologists maintain a database of such patients, however no coordinated efforts have been made to combine these individual registries into a broader national registry. Finally, recently published British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) guideline for the management of vitiligo, recommended the development of a national registry for people with vitiligo undergoing systemic or light therapy to identify outcomes and safety.

To evaluate the user confidence in the confirmation of correct counts using a novel device and to assess clinical usability of the device during surgery.

Accidentally retained surgical items or swabs are well-recognised errors that result in adverse consequences for patients. This error is one of the commonest "Never Events" - patient safety incidents that are considered preventable. Although uncommon, these incidents can have devastating consequences. Retained surgical items have 70% re-interventions, reaching 80% morbidity and 35% mortality.
Swabs or sponges are like small towels that soak up blood and body fluids so that the surgeon can visualise the operating area effectively. Swabs are used in all areas of surgery which include operations on the tummy, chest, limbs. They are also used in the vagina during childbirth, to assess for tears and to minimise blood oozing from the vagina.
The common risk factors for this error are out of hours surgical or childbirth procedures, multiple handovers in the care of the patient, raised BMI (Body Mass Index) and unplanned change to the operative intervention.
As the name suggests, a 'never event' should never happen in the first place. Never. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Incidents involving surgical swabs being left behind, particularly during a caesarean section or a perineal repair following a vaginal birth, are still happening despite over 100 years of institutional awareness of the problem and tentative solutions being implemented in clinical practice.
never-event incidents involving retained surgical swabs are a widespread problem affecting healthcare systems worldwide. It is therefore reasonable to ask the question: why are surgical swabs being left behind and what can be done to prevent this from happening?