🩺 March 17-23: Patient Safety Awareness Week 🏥
Every year, Patient Safety Awareness Week (established by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, IHI) serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of reducing preventable medical errors and improving surgical outcomes worldwide. While not a UN-designated event, it is globally recognized by healthcare professionals, organizations, and innovators committed to enhancing patient care.
At Surgify, our mission is to minimize surgical risks through precision technology, ensuring safer procedures and better outcomes for every patient.
🔍 A Closer Look at Incidental Durotomies
One of the most common yet often underreported complications in spinal and cranial surgeries is incidental durotomy—an unintentional tear in the dura mater during surgery. These injuries occur in thousands of procedures annually and can sometimes have severe consequences for patients.
📊 What the research (1) tells us:
• Prospective studies (tracking patients forward over time) report an average 9.57% incidence rate.
• Retrospective studies (analyzing past records) report a significantly lower average 4.52% incidence rate.
This discrepancy suggests that incidental durotomies may be underreported, particularly in retrospective studies that do not always capture the full scope of complications. This reinforces the urgent need for better data, better tools, and better safety measures to address one of the most common complications in spinal and cranial surgery.
🚀 Advancing Patient Safety
At Surgify, we are committed to developing technological solutions that enhance surgical precision and control, helping to reduce preventable injuries and improve patient outcomes.
💡 Let’s use Patient Safety Awareness Week as a call to action:
✅ Improve transparency in reporting surgical complications.
✅ Invest in safer surgical innovations.
✅ Prioritize patient well-being at every step.
Safer surgeries matter. Let’s make them a priority. Join the conversation.
(1) Ghobrial GM, et al. Unintended durotomy in lumbar degenerative spinal surgery: a 10-year systematic review of the literature. Neurosurg Focus. 2015 Oct;39(4):E8.
#PatientSafety #SurgicalInnovation #SaferSurgeries #Surgify #IHI #PatientSafetyAwarenessWeek