A solution for medical and legal problems arising from forgotten ureteral stents: initial results from a reminder short message service (SMS).

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe and present the initial results of a computer-based system that tracks ureteral stents and automatically sends a reminder through a short message service (SMS) to both the patient's and the urologist's mobile phones Using an integrated stent register program (SRP) and a stent extraction reminder program (SERP) with an electronic patient record program (EPRP) located within our hospital's computer network. In this system, the demographic data of all of the patients are recorded into the password-protected EPRP. After a stent is inserted, the surgeon enters the details of the operation into the EPRP. The SRP automatically asks the user to define the "optimal stent life (OSL)". The SERP checks the recorded patients daily and sends an SMS reminder to staff and patient when the OSL is reached. The SERP continues to send reminders via the SMS until stent is removed. We analyzed the success of the SMS recall system. A total of 186 patients received stents over an 11-month period. The patients in group-2 (n = 108) were recalled by the SERP, and the remainder of the patients (n = 78, group-1) were not included in the project. The mean delay from the designated OSL to the time of stent removal was 307 ± 118.6 (72-1,344) and 14.6 ± 2.06 (5-36) h in groups 1 and 2, respectively (p < 0.0001). Our initial results showed that the SRP and SERP prevent stent removal from being forgotten, thus preventing related medical and legal problems.