Integris Southwest Medical Center Adopts SurgiCount Safety-Sponge System Technology for All of its Operating Rooms

LOS ANGELES -- SurgiCount Medical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Patient Safety Technologies, Inc., announces that it has entered into a three-year agreement to provide its patented Safety-Sponge System for the prevention of retained sponges after surgery to Integris Southwest Medical Center, a member of Oklahoma's largest not-for-profit healthcare organization. SurgiCount has received an initial purchase order from Integris Southwest for all of the operating rooms at this facility. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"By reducing or eliminating the risk of retained sponges and enhancing the efficiency of our surgical teams, we believe that the Safety-Sponge System will deliver a real improvement in surgical outcomes," said Marva Harrison, administrative director of surgical services at Integris Southwest. "We are pleased that our patients will now be able to benefit directly from this exciting new technology."

"Southwest Medical Center is the second hospital in the 11-hospital Integris system to order the Safety-Sponge System and make it a standard of care in their hospital," noted Bill Adams, chief executive officer of SurgiCount. "More and more hospitals are recognizing the critical role of our Safety-Sponge System in reducing or eliminating dangerous and costly sponge-counting errors. Our system is currently being evaluated by other major hospital networks in California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri and Oklahoma, and we expect to win additional supply agreements soon."

 SurgiCount Medical received FDA 510(k) clearance to market and sell its Safety-Sponge System in March 2006, and is the only computer-assisted system for counting sponges cleared by the FDA. The Safety Sponge System is an integrated turn-key program of thermally affixed, data matrix tagged surgical sponges, line-of-sight scanning technology, and documentation that offers surgeons and hospitals a solution to gossypiboma -- the term for surgical sponges accidentally left inside a human body after surgery. Based on estimates and assumptions made by Patient Safety Technologies management, gossypiboma occurs in an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 surgical procedures each year in the United States alone, and liability settlements and other costs related to retained sponges amount to an estimated $500 million to $750 million annually.

Source: SurgiCount Medical