Controlling articles of equipment during surgery
First Claim
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1. A system for monitoring articles of equipment for use in surgery and recovery after such use, comprising:
- (a) articles of equipment for use in surgery, which individually and directly bear a machine readable source of identifying information;
(b) reading means (19) for reading the information from the sources on each of the articles both before and after use thereof; and
(c) a computer (3) connected to the reading means for recording information obtained from the information source by the reading means and for comparing or matching information obtained before use of an article with information obtained after such use.
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Abstract
Articles of equipment such as swabs and surgical instruments are provided with a machine readable information source such as a bar code, and are monitored during surger by means of a system which comprises a bar code scanner (19) and a computer (3) on which information read by the scanner can be stored. The system may include scales (9) for weighing the equipment so that body fluid absorbed by absorbent articles such as swabs can be determined.
142 Citations
16 Claims
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1. A system for monitoring articles of equipment for use in surgery and recovery after such use, comprising:
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(a) articles of equipment for use in surgery, which individually and directly bear a machine readable source of identifying information; (b) reading means (19) for reading the information from the sources on each of the articles both before and after use thereof; and (c) a computer (3) connected to the reading means for recording information obtained from the information source by the reading means and for comparing or matching information obtained before use of an article with information obtained after such use. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16)
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- 14. A method of monitoring articles of equipment used during surgery and recovered after such use, each article directly bearing a machine readable information source, the method comprising reading information from the source on each of the articles both before and after use thereof using a machine, recording the information in a computer, and comparing or matching, by means of the computer, information obtained before use of an article with information obtained after such use.
Specification