Published in the online journal Surgery on December 18, a study conducted by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins has uncovered a highly concerning fact that more than 4,000 errors are made each year by the US surgeons.

Discovery of `never events' that are meant to never occur in such a large number directly ask for more heed on surgical safety. A lot of endeavours have been put so far to ensure as well as bring improvement in surgical safety.

It has been told that cases of a foreign object like a sponge left inside the body of a patient and operation on wrong leg have been found. Also, these events are being used in the United States like quality metrics in healthcare.

However, the researchers were not able to find what cost these events incurred on the healthcare system and what the patient outcomes were. Also, they were not able to identify the characteristics of the involved providers.

Later, the team analyzed the National Practitioner Data Bank's data since it is medical malpractice claims' federal repository. They found that hospitals needed to report such events as per law. Also, these events are costly for the healthcare system and cause patients severe harms.