Boosting the "no sponge left behind" agenda, Menlo Ventures and Stanford University have backed an $8.2 million Series A
round
for
RF Surgical Systems Inc., bringing total funding to $20 million. The company will use the funding to expand marketing of
radio frequency tag products that help acute care hospitals track and detect surgical
sponges, gauze or towels remaining in a patient after surgery.
RF
Surgical has won FDA approval and is marketing its proprietary radio
frequency chip-based system to to avert surgeons, gulp, forgetting to
remove medical supplies, euphemistically called "retained surgical
objects," in a patient undergoing an operation. Such incidents are
estimated to occur in one out of 1,000 to 1,500 intra-abdominal
surgeries. The system is already being used in more than 30 hospitals
in the U.S. and is being introduced in Europe. No word, for you
Seinfeld fans, on whether the tech can detect Junior Mints.
See
here for a
video interview with Dr. Jeffrey Port, founder of RF Surgical and
himself a thoracic surgeon. "Complex, lengthy cases can use 20, 50, 100
sponges--100 of these [operating room] sponges that are used for
exposure, for allowing us to retract certain vital organs out of the
way--and they can be stuffed into crevices and corners, and often
lost," he says in the piece, adding that it can take hours to determine
if a sponge has been left behind in the body and to remove it.
-- Clifford CarlsenSee July 25 press release from RF Surgical
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