Disturbing news about Guidant Corporation’s failure to reveal problems with one of its AICDs. The New York Times is on the case:
A medical device maker, the Guidant Corporation, did not tell doctors or patients for three years that a unit implanted in an estimated 24,000 people that is designed to shock a faltering heart contains a flaw that has caused a small number of those units to short-circuit and malfunction.
The matter has come to light after the death of a 21-year-old college student from Minnesota, Joshua Oukrop, with a genetic heart disease. Guidant acknowledges that his device, known as a defibrillator, short-circuited. The young man was in Moab, Utah, on a spring break bicycling trip in March with his girlfriend when he complained of fatigue. He then fell to the ground and died of cardiac arrest.
Guidant subsequently told his doctors that it was aware of 25 other cases in which the defibrillator, a Ventak Prizm 2 Model 1861, had been affected by the same flaw. Guidant said it had changed its manufacturing processes three years ago to fix the problem. The physicians say that had they known earlier, they would have replaced the unit in their patient because he was at high risk of sudden death. His death is the only one known.
A defibrillator is surgically implanted in the chest under the skin. It sends out an electrical charge to try to shock a chaotically beating heart back into normal rhythm.
In interviews in recent days, a top Guidant executive, Dr. Joseph M. Smith, said that the company had not seen a compelling reason to issue an alert to physicians about the defibrillators because the failure rate was very low and replacing the devices might pose greater patient risks.
But late yesterday, when told that The New York Times was preparing an article about the device, the company issued an advisory to doctors about it. Guidant is recommending that the unit not be replaced because of the electrical problem.
The episode highlights an important issue: Doctors and patients are not always told when a medical device maker has data indicating that its product has a flaw that, while rare, poses potential dangers. Also, companies are not required to report immediately all safety modifications to the Food and Drug Administration.
More here…