US Patent Issued to Stryker on May 6 for "Sponge counting system and method for ensuring proper removal of surgical sponges following a medical procedure" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,293,812, issued on May 6, was assigned to Stryker Corp. (Portage, Mich.).

"Sponge counting system and method for ensuring proper removal of surgical sponges following a medical procedure" was invented by Brian Stewart (Ladera Ranch, Calif.), Michael Roux (Trabuco Canyon, Calif.) and Thomas Armentrout (Carlsbad, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sponge counting system for maintaining an inventory of articles used during a medical or surgical procedure, where, in the event an article for which the status needs to be reconciled is left in a patient, the system generates a record that the article is in a partially reconciled state and ...