The World Health Organization issued its first guidelines on Tuesday aimed at reducing complications and deaths from the rising numbers of operations now being performed. Many who read the checklist will react by wondering why hospitals and surgeons have not been doing this for years.
The guidelines are a list of simple safety checks that the health organization said could halve the rate of surgical complications. The list is intended to improve anesthetic safety practices, avoid infections and improve communication among members of surgical teams.
One guideline calls for all members of the masked surgical team to identify themselves and their roles and ask simple questions like, “Does everyone agree that this is Patient X, undergoing a hernia repair?”
Other recommendations call for marking the correct site for surgery to avoid operating on the wrong patient or performing the wrong procedure; giving an antibiotic within 60 minutes of making an incision, to reduce infections; checking for allergies to drugs; inserting two intravenous lines for operations involving substantial blood loss; and counting sponges and needles to ensure that none are left in a patient.
The surgical guidelines grew out of a similar checklist aimed at reducing infections in hospitals. The infection guidelines were developed by Dr. Peter J. Pronovost of Johns Hopkins University, who borrowed the idea from the aviation industry.
Three countries — Britain, Ireland and Jordan — have said they will put the surgery guidelines in force in all hospitals, Professional groups endorsing checklists include the American College of Surgeons, the American Society of Anesthesiology and the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses.
Updated: