Together, major hospitals in the US throw away at least $15 million a year in unused surgical supplies that could go to good use in developing countries.
Sent abroad, the otherwise wasted supplies could ease critical shortages, improve care, and boost public health, report researchers.
The estimate published online in the World Journal of Surgery highlights an opportunity for US hospitals to relieve the global burden of surgically treatable conditions while reducing the cost and environmental impact of medical waste disposal at home.
“Perfectly good, entirely sterile, and, above all, much-needed surgical supplies are routinely discarded in American operating rooms,” says lead investigator Richard Redett, associate professor of pediatric plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“We hope the results of our study will be a wakeup call for hospitals and surgeons across the country to rectify this wasteful practice by developing systems that collect and ship unused materials to places that desperately need them.”
‘Win-Win Situation’
The study may be one of the first systematic attempts to measure the national extent of the problem and the potential savings and impact on patients’ lives. While several organizations run donation programs for leftover operating room materials, such efforts would be far more successful if they were standard at all major surgical centers, the authors say.
The staggering waste of surgical supplies, they say, is rooted in the common practice of bundling surgical materials in ways that streamline operating room readiness and efficiency. Once a bundle is opened, however, everything in it is trashed, even items left unused.
Donation programs “are acutely needed not only to help address serious needs in resource-poor settings but also to minimize the significant environmental burden at home institutions,” says study coauthor Eric Wan, a recent Johns Hopkins School of Medicine graduate now in postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health.
“This really is a win-win situation.”
Better Patient Outcomes
The investigators based their estimates on a program that recovers and delivers unused surgical supplies from the Johns Hopkins Hospital to two surgical centers in Ecuador.
The authors tracked 19 high-demand surgical items donated to the Ecuadorian hospitals over three years, then extrapolated the value of donations to 232 US surgical centers with caseloads similar to that of Johns Hopkins.
The results show that if the 232 hospitals saved and donated unused surgical supplies, they would generate 2 million pounds of materials worth at least $15 million a year.
The researchers also tracked outcomes among 33 Ecuadorian patients whose surgeries were made possible by the donations. That analysis showed that donated surgical supplies prevented, on average, eight years of disability per patient.
The Supply List
Topping the study’s 19-item surgical supplies list were gauze, disposable syringes, sutures, and surgical towels. It is important, however, the researchers say, to tailor donations to the specific needs of each hospital. Matching leftovers to need, they say, will prevent unnecessary shipping costs and avoid creating medical waste at the recipients’ end.
“Saving and shipping these materials is truly a low-hanging fruit enterprise, a simple strategy that could have a dramatic impact on surgical outcomes and public health in resource-poor settings and truly change people’s lives,” says Redett, who has been running the Johns Hopkins donation program since 2003.
The Johns Hopkins initiative, known as Supporting Hospitals Abroad with Resources and Equipment (SHARE), was modeled after a program launched at Yale in 1991.
Source: Johns Hopkins University Republished from Futurity.org under Creative Commons License 3.0.
*Image of “garbage bin“ via Shutterstock
Friends Read Free