Safety

Use color codes to identify correct-site surgery

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, July 20, 2006

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During an ophthalmologic procedure, the patient's face is usually covered in its entirety with only the eyeball exposed, so there's no place to mark the correct surgery site.

One solution is to mark the correct side of the body to help surgeons identify the correct site. Opthalmologists can use different colored pieces of paper to denote the different eyes. For example, a red piece of paper would be used to denote the right eye, a green piece of paper for the left eye.

The same concept can be applied to other specialties that perform surgery on both sides of the body.



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