Patient participation in surgical site marking: can this be an additional tool to help avoid wrong-site surgery?

Wrong-site surgery is defined as an operation conducted at the wrong site, on the wrong person, or resulting in the wrong procedure. Since 1993, more than 2200 wrong-site surgeries have been reported by the National Practitioner Data Base. A 2005 survey reported, 5.6% of replying academy fellows encountered a wrong-site surgery incident. Multiple interventions have been since suggested for prevention of these occurrences by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Bergal LM, Schwarzkopf R, Walsh M, Tejwani NC. J Patient Saf. 2010 Dec;6(4):221-5. PMID: 21500609