January 30, 2012 ~ What’s going on inside the FDA? Six of the “FDA Nine” whistleblowers are suing the agency for illegally spying on their private email claiming they were retaliated against after they warned lawmakers that unsafe medical devices were being approved for market.  You may recall as President Obama was taking office on
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Many in the United Kingdom assume that an implanted medical device is reviewed for safety before it is permanently placed inside a patient. They would be wrong. The Guardian reports (here) that the European quality standard – the CE mark – represents an assurance that is the same whether the product is a breast implant
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January 23, 2012 ~ House Democrats are asking Republicans for a hearing on Johnson & Johnson synthetic surgical transvaginal mesh used to treat pelvic organ prolapse, and the Allergan Lap-Band for weight reduction because of a growing number of patient injuries and a fear that device makers and the U. S. Food and Drug Administration
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was supposed to submit a new agreement to lawmakers on  January 15, concerning how much funding it will need next year to review medical devices and conduct product reviews. Bloomberg reports (here) no new agreement was filed – the FDA essentially missed its deadline. That may hurt the
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January 19, 2012 ~ In a letter to the Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), (here) January 19, 2012, Neil Feder, M.D. of the Project on Government Oversight writes about the 510(k) process that allows untested medical devices onto the market without premarket approval. Share this:

January 16, 2012 ~ Medscape Medical News (here) reports that medical device maker Covidien is voluntarily recalling surgical staples used in endoscopic thoracic surgery after three deaths were linked to the device. In addition to the three deaths, there were 13 serious injuries associated with the Duet TRS single-use cartridges which have the potential to
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JANUARY 12, 2012 ~ A growing number of women from around the country who are plaintiffs in transvaginal mesh litigation have a court date of Wednesday, January 26 in Miami. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)  is set to hear requests by plaintiff attorneys to have thousands of defective mesh lawsuits consolidated in the
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JANUARY 10, 2012 ~ The front-page headlines in Europe concern substandard and defective breast implants made by the French company Poly Implants Protheses (PIP) that ruptured and deflated leaking machine-grade silicone in the women who had the implants to enhance their appearance or to mask the effects of disfiguring breast surgery. Share this:

JANUARY 9, 2012 ~ The following is a list of the companies who received the letters from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) January 3, 2012, requesting three years of followup studies on the complications associated with synthetic surgical mesh used for pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. This is unprecedented in that the
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JANUARY 4, 2012 ~ Bloomberg reports that the Food and Drug Administration’s division that oversees medical devices has ordered surgical mesh manufacturers to study how often synthetic mesh harms women by causing infection and organ damage. (story is here) The order follows an FDA report last summer of a five-fold jump in the number of
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