Will it? A sponge/cloth etc . . .? How about on an X-Ray?
A co-worker recently told me about a relative who had a sponge left behind after a C-Section. It got infected and they couldn’t find the source even after an MRI and an x-ray. I wondered if the MRI could even pick up a piece of cloth in a body. I’d be surprised if an x-ray couldn’t, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be missed due to the large search area. When I had my wisdom teeth out long ago they left a piece of cloth inside the stitches which got infected and I believe it showed up on an x-ray, but that’s a small localized search area.
I doubt that you would recognize it on an MRI. On a plain x-ray it would be much more easily seen inasmuch as all surgical sponges have an opaque marker sewn into them so that the won’t be missed. At the Mayo Clinic they used to, and perhaps still do, x ray the abdomen of everyone immediately after surgery to detect this exact rare occurance.
Actually, the “sponges” are thin mesh cloth and when soaked with blood are teeny tiny and invisible. They are amazingly easy to lose track of, particularly if there is an unexpected amount of bleeding or the patient has a large body habitus.
That’s right. That’s why there is a sponge count before and after. If any are missing after, a portable x-ray is done right there. Even then, most of the time the sponge doesn’t show on the x-ray because it was usually misplaced in a place other than the patient’s body. Or maybe the opaque marker doesn’t work so well? Hmmm.
They can be difficult to see visually, and hard to count because they stick together, but usually they display quite readily on x-ray. That’s why they make them specifically visible to x-radiation. See here for a good overview of different objects and their visibility to radiographic imaging.
Actually, there was a recent case the at The Riley Hospital for Children of a 15 year old girl who was in a bike accident about a year ago. She had complained of an inability to “breath out” sufficently and had suffered a series of respiratory infections over the past year (for which it is my understanding that she had received several series of X-Rays). In any case she recently came back in with a collasped lung, and they decided to put a scope down her pipe. Turns out she had a habid of riding around with a pen in her mouth (a fact she didn’t recall, but agrees was possible). In any case they found a light green (almost, but not quite tranparent) pen cap lodged in one of her bronchi. It had been missed in the previous X-rays. I had always thought that an aspiration would lead to an almost immediate collaspe. It would be fascinating to talk with someone who has performed many autopsies to learn if they ever find a piece of corn or some other debris in peoples lungs after death(I say corn, because I eat canned corn frequently since it’s so cheap and as I do most things inhale the stuff like a pig, I almost choke every once in awhile on the stuff).
