Unexpected and inappropriate shocks to the heart

Jackson underwent emergency surgery to replace the defibrillator but continued to have anxiety from the experience. He says he is now at an increased risk of cardiovascular events or death because of the inappropriate shocks to his heart, which is causing him pain, extreme anxiety, fear of death and great physical, emotional and psychological suffering.

Jackson’s case is one of several that have come to light over the years after patients reported experiencing sometimes excruciatingly painful electric shocks in their chest. Certain models of the leads, which connect to the defibrillators, were found to have fractured, causing the defibrillators to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether. As a result, on October 15, 2007, Medtronic suspended the sale of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator Leads. To date, Medtronic has reported 13 fatalities associated with the faulty leads.

Jackson’s complaint contends that Medtronic did not provide him with notice of the increased fracturing risk and made unconscionable or fraudulent representations regarding the product.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Texas man suffers from PTSD from defective cardiac defibrillator

The Class I recall involves nearly 37,000 of Medtronic’s Sigma and Kappa pacemakers, most manufactured between November 2000 and November 2002. Class I recalls are the most serious type of recall and involve situations in which there is a reasonable probability that the device will cause serious adverse injury or death.

An estimated 15,200 active Kappa devices and 6,100 active Sigma devices are affected by the recall. Many of the devices have been implanted in patients for five years or longer and may be nearing what Medtronic calls normal elective replacement time. Of the active Kappa and Sigma devices, Medtronic has observed 285 Kappa devices and 131 Sigma devices with the failure mechanism.

Patients with a malfunctioning pacemaker may experience a return of symptoms associated with abnormal heart rate such as fainting or lightheadedness. In rare cases, pacemaker-dependent patients may experience serious injury or even death, according to the FDA’s recall notice. Patients with questions about their pacemaker should contact their primary care physician or cardiologist, who can help identify if the patient’s medical device is included in the recall.

Source: FDA

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA issues Class I recall for faulty pacemakers

According to an internal FDA document, senior officials with the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), which is charged with overseeing the safety of medical devices, made a decision to ignore the Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) regulation and as a result put patients’ lives at risk.

The controversy stems from a new classification of medical devices that resulted from a federal loophole that allowed products that are “substantially equivalent” to combinations of other products marketed before 1976 to be sold. As a result, hundreds of new “Class C” devices were approved and made available for use.

Class C is the FDA’s most risky category and includes heart defibrillators from Medtronic Inc. In 2007, Medtronic suspended the sale of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads that are used on Medtronic implantable defibrillators, after reports of deaths and injuries to patients with the defibrillators with leads that had fractured or broken causing the defibrillators to shock inappropriately or not at all.

The debate will continue in Congress with the June 18th hearing.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Congressional hearings continue on Medical Device Safety Act

Storms is just one of many individuals who were injured when the Sprint Fidelis leads attached to a defibrillator fractured and malfunctioned. Medtronic voluntarily suspended distribution of the Sprint Fidelis Leads in 2007, the same year Storms’ defibrillator shocked him, after receiving reports of numerous intentional shocks and five deaths related to the faulty leads. Medtronic has since upped the number of deaths linked to the malfunctioning defibrillator leads to 13.

Cardiac defibrillators are placed in patients with life threatening heart conditions to help detect and correct irregular or rapid heart rates. Lead wires attached to the defibrillators and placed in the heart give shocks to correct irregularities detected by the defibrillator. In some individuals with Medtronic devices, the Sprint Fidelis leads have fractured or broken, causing the lead to inappropriately shock the patient or not fire at all.

Following the recall, patients like Storms who were harmed by their devices, began filing lawsuits against Medtronic only to have them thrown out by a judge citing a 2008 Supreme Court precedent that argued that devices that have been approved by the FDA were immune from state tort suits. But all that could change if lawmakers pass the Medical Device Safety Act. The legislation would restore the rights of patients who have been harmed by unsafe medical devices to seek justice in state courts.

Source: Cleveland.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Man says faulty defibrillator felt like being kicked by horse

The defect involves a separation of wires that connect to the electronic circuit to the pacemaker components. Patients with the defective devices reported feeling faint or lightheaded. Medtronic has received two reports of patient deaths that may be a result of the faulty pacemakers.

An estimated 15,200 active Kappa devices and 6,100 active Sigma devices are affected by the issue. Many of the devices have been implanted in patients for five years or longer and may be nearing what Medtronic calls normal elective replacement time. Of the active Kappa and Sigma devices, Medtronic has observed 285 Kappa devices and 131 Sigma devices with the failure mechanism. The company predicts failure rates of 1.1 percent for the Kappa pacemaker and 4.8 percent for the Sigma pacemaker over the remaining lifetime of the pacemakers because of the defect.

In accordance with the HRS recommendations on device advisory communications, Medtronic will begin informing patients with registered devices that fall within the above mentioned parameters with a letter dated May 27, 2009. The letter will advise patients to contact their physician for more information.

The warning comes on the heels of a massive recall of Medtronic’s Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads because of reports of fractures in the leads which can result in the defibrillators to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether. To date, the Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads defects have been blamed on at least 13 deaths.

Source: Medtronic

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic informs doctors of faulty pacemakers; Letter to patients to follow

Mikulski asked Dr. Hamburg if she would heed concerns made by whistleblowers, such as those made by a group of employees at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health that in January accused the FDA of carelessly approving medical devices which ultimately put patients’ health and safety at risk.

Dr. Hamburg replied that she would see to it that critical issues and concerns raised by whistleblowers would be addressed by the agency if she is confirmed as commissioner.

The scientists allege that the FDA had approved medical devices for sale even after their review of many medical devices had resulted in serious objections by the scientific team reviewing them. One device approved under such circumstances included Medtronic cardiac defibrillators. It was later found that many of the defibrillators had defective leads that had caused the defibrillators to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work all together. According to a Supreme Court ruling last year, because the devices had been approved by the FDA, those injured by the faulty devices were unable to sue the manufacturer.

As a result, a large collation of consumer and patient safety groups teamed up to push the Medical Device Safety Act (MDSA), legislation that would restore the rights of patients who have been harmed by unsafe medical devices to seek justice in state courts.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Hamburg hopes to create a culture in FDA where concerns are heard

The complaint incorporates by reference the relevant portions of the Master Consolidated Complaint for Individuals on file with the Clerk of the Court for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota in the matter In Re MEDTRONIC, INC., SPRINT FIDELIS LEAD PRODUCT LIABILITY LITIGATION.

According to the complaint, Lancaster received the Sprint Fidelis lead on May 10, 2007 at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As a result of the lead, Landcaster suffered injury and damages.

On October 15, 2007, Medtronic suspended the sale of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator Leads after receiving reports of fatalities associated with the defibrillators. It was discovered that the Sprint Fidelis leads, or cables that connected to the devices, had fractured, causing the defibrillators to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work all together. Since the initial recall, Medtronic has increased the number of fatalities associated with the faulty leads to 13.

Due to a Supreme Court ruling last year, manufacturers of medical devices that have been approved by the FDA are immune to lawsuits by victims harmed by those devices. Currently, consumer and patient safety groups are working to push the Medical Device Safety Act (MDSA), legislation that would restore the rights of patients who have been harmed by unsafe medical devices, such as Lancaster, to seek justice in state courts.

Read the complaint.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Alabama man injured by cardiac defibrillator sues manufacturer

The meeting, which includes all scientists within the medical device evaluation office, is a rare gathering and likely to establish a plan for how the agency will handle a slurry of controversial issues including a Congress-initiated investigation of the device division by the Institute of Medicine, according to the New York Times.

The investigation is spurred by allegations from nine scientists who have separated themselves from the FDA, who have signed letters to President Obama charging that agency officials approved medical devices for sale despite often unanimous objections from scientific reviewers.

AAJ has been working with a large coalition of consumer and patient safety groups to push the Medical Device Safety Act (MDSA), legislation that would restore the rights of patients who have been harmed by unsafe medical devices to seek justice in state courts.

Last year a Supreme Court ruling gave manufacturers of medical devices immunity from state tort suits if the device has been approved by the FDA’s pre-market approval process. MDSA would restore the right to patients with medical devices, “as Congress has intended in 1976 they passed legislation on medical device safety,” according to AAJ.

Early this month, people with Medtronic cardiac defibrillators implanted in their chests converged on Washington, D.C., to lobby for passage of MDSA. In 1997, Medtronic suspended the sale of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads after receiving reports of fatalities connected to the devices. The leads were found to have fractured, which caused them to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether. According to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, patients harmed by the defibrillators cannot sue because the medical devices were previously approved by the FDA.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA meeting could compromise Medical Device Safety Act

The recalled devices were manufactured from May 2004 through February 2009 and distributed from May 2004 through February 9, 2009. The defibrillators that fall under the recall have serial numbers in which the last six numbers are under 200000. Defibrillators obtained prior to February 14, 2009 should have serial numbers under 200000 and fall under the recall.

The recall follows a series of letters sent in February and March 2009 to distributors and customers with recommendations and instructions for customers on specific steps to mitigate the identified problems with the device. The February letter instructed customers to replace their batteries every three years. The March follow-up letter instructed customers to download new software for their devices and to remove any battery replacement reminder labels. The new software will detect and prevent potential battery problems that could develop with 123A Lithium batteries in the future.

Software upgrades can be found at www.zollaedplusbatteryhelp.com.

ZOLL will send an email notice to all customers who included their email address as part of their contact information. ZOLL will also publish information about the recall in industry magazines.

Class 1 recalls are the most serious type of recall and involve situations in which there is a reasonable probability that use of these products will cause serious injury or death.

Source: FDA

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA issues Class I recall on ZOLL heart defibrillator

The pressure from the FDA is long coming. In 1990, Congress ordered the more rigorous testing of medical devices before they became available for use, however the FDA never finished implementing the law, getting caught up in a federal loophole that allowed products that are “substantially equivalent” to combinations of other products marketed before 1976 to be sold. Thus, hundreds of new “Class C” devices were approved and made available for use. Class C is the FDA’s most risky category.

Products that currently fall in the Class C category include external heart defibrillators from Medtronic Inc., Royal Phillips Electronics NV and Zoll Medical Corp; dialysis catheters from Covidien Ltd.; hip joints from Zimmer Holdings Inc.; spinal screws from Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson; and a heart pump from Abiomed Inc.

The FDA’s recent action on the measure is spurred by the Government Accountability Office, which criticized the delay last January. The FDA will issue the regulations to the makers of the high-risk medical devices and based on the data, the agency will determine whether to reclassify devices to a less risky category or require the manufacturers to undergo further, more rigorous pre-market testing.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA to crack down on medical device manufacturers

Medtronic recalled the defibrillators in 2007 after five deaths occurred in patients who had the devices implanted in them. It was discovered that the Sprint Fidelis leads, or cables that connected to the devices, had fractured causing the defibrillators to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work all together. Since the recall, Medtronic has increased the number of fatalities linked to the devices to 13.

About 150,000 Americans still have the defibrillators. Medtronic advises patients to discuss with their doctors whether the benefits of removal outweigh the risk, adding that it should be done only as a last resort. Removing the cables can be dangerous. Four patients have already died during the device removal process. Some experts fear that that number will climb if patients don’t seek out skilled doctors at medical centers to perform the extractions.

Finding credible medical centers may also present challenges. Data on the number or the success rates of lead extractions is generally not available to the public.

For those who do choose to have extractions, Medtronic is supplying replacement leads. However, the $15,000 to $20,000 cost of the surgery to remove and implant the new leads is falling on the shoulders of private insurers or Medicare.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Patients, doctors face tough choice about removing faulty heart devices

Ron Albrecht

“I don’t trust the unit itself,” he told NWI.com. “You’ve got that fear you’re constantly going to get shocked. It’s very traumatic.”

Because of the faulty defibrillator, Albrecht had to quit his job because he was no longer able to lift heavy equipment. The defective device, he said, has changed his life for the worse.

In 1997, Medtronic suspended sales of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillators after deaths were linked to the devices. The device’s leads were found to have fractured, which caused them to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether, putting patients’ lives at risk.

Albrecht was one of the many patients who tried to sue Medtronic over his faulty defibrillator leads but previous legislation prevented him and other victims from doing so. Earlier this week, Albrecht and several victims of malfunctioned heart devices converged in Washington, D.C. to lobby for support of the Medical Device Safety Act, which would allow consumers who have been hurt by defective medical devices to sue the device’s maker even if the devices have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

A spokesman with Medtronic says the industry as a whole is resistant to the proposed act, stating that a 1978 federal law was enacted to ensure that the FDA operates as the arbiter of safety.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Victim of defective defibrillator lobbies for Medical Device Safety Act

The bill was introduced by Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey and Henry Waxman of California after a Minnesota federal district court dismissed lawsuits filed against Medtronic by 1,496 individuals harmed by their malfunctioning Medtronic defibrillators.

In 1997, Medtronic suspended the sale of many of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads after receiving reports of fatalities connected to the devices. The devices were found to have fractured, which caused them to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether.

The patient convergence in Washington, D.C., was accompanied by public service announcements that feature Don Hickey, who was shocked repeatedly by his Medtronic heart device after undergoing surgery. He later found out doctors replaced his defibrillator with the same, defective model. According to the law, he cannot sue the maker of his medical device.

Alternatively, the videoes also feature Diana Levine, who lost her arm from what she calls faulty labeling of a drug by its manufacturer. She successfully sued both her doctor and the drug company. The injustice she sees is that people, like her, who have been harmed by pharmaceutical companies, can seek justice in court, whereas individuals like Hickey who have been harmed by faulty medical devices, cannot.

“If you can’t hold a corporation responsible when a product with FDA approval hurts you, that’s like giving a corporation a license to hit and run,” Levine told The Minnesota Independent. “What’s really crazy is now there are two laws. The Supreme Court has said that people like me who are hurt by bad drugs can sue. But people like Don who are hurt by bad medical devices cannot. It’s time we finish the job. We need to all work together to pass the Medical Device Safety Act.”

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Patients converge on Capital Hill for right to sue Medtronic

In October 2007, Medtronic suspended the sale of many of its Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads after receiving reports of five fatalities connected with the devices. Fractures were found in devices which could cause them to unnecessarily shock patients or fail to work altogether.

The Sprint Fidelis leads connect electrical defibrillators to the hearts of patients with aberrant cardiac rhythms and deliver a jolt to the heart as needed to return the heartbeat to a normal rhythm. The defibrillators had been implanted in about 268,000 prior to the suspension, and an estimated 150,000 remain in U.S. patients today. Medtronic and many health experts have advised that the leads not be removed unless the device showed signs of fracturing, as removing the leads can put patients at serious risk.

In its letter to doctors, Medtronic says it hired a panel of independent physicians to study the issue and pore through 89 of the 107 reports sent to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The panel found that four of the 13 deaths occurred during procedures to remove the devices.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Higher number of fatalities connected with Medtronic heart device

A new study published Monday in the Heart Rhythm medical journal suggests that the more than 200,000 recipients of  Medtronic heart defibrillator leads may be at a greater risk than previously thought.

The leads, known as Sprint Fidelis lead, connect electrical defibrillators to the hearts of patients with aberrant cardiac rhythms and deliver a jolt to the heart as needed to return the heartbeat to a normal rhythm. The devices were recalled by Medtronic two years ago after fractures were spotted in the devices, which caused them to fail. Medtronic says the faulty leads may have contributed to five deaths.

Removing the leads can put patients at serious risk. Medtronic and some health experts have advised that the leads not be removed unless the device showed signs of fracturing. An estimated 150,000 Sprint Fidelis leads remain in patients.

But the latest study, conducted by Dr. Robert G. Hauser of the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Dr. David L. Hayes of the Mayo Clinic, suggest that patients’ risk increases as the devices age. The report has some experts suggesting that, contrary to previous advice, for some patients, removing the Fidelis lead may be appropriate if the benefits outweigh the risks.

The study is based on data from 3,000 patients who had any brand of defibrillator leads implanted at the Minneapolis Heart Institute or the Mayo Clinic between 2004 and 2008. Twenty-eight percent of the leads were the Sprint Fidelis brand. The data showed that 3.75 percent of the Sprint Fidelis leads failed compared to 0.6 percent for other leads. The data also showed the failure rate was increasing.

Medtronic stands on its own data, issuing a statement: “It is important to note that data collected from center to center would be expected to vary. We believe that our analyses are representative of overall Fidelis performance.”

According to the New York Times, Congressional Democrats plan to reintroduce legislation that would nullify a Supreme Court decision last month to dismiss lawsuits against Medtronic for the defective leads, citing a ruling last year that shielded makers of certain medical devices from product liability lawsuits.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Study shows heart leads may fail as they age

Medtronic defended the Minnesota judge on Friday, saying that “this is clearly an effort to remove a well respected judge following rulings the plaintiffs’ lawyers do not like.”

Richard H. Kyle, Jr., works for a Minneapolis based law firm with offices in the Midwest, China, and Mexico. Kyle’s bio on the firm’s website states that he is “a shareholder in [the firm's] White Collar & Regulatory Defense, Health Care Fraud & Compliance and Litigation Groups.”

The website also says that Kyle “is one of the top 40 criminal defense lawyers in Minnesota by the Minnesota Journal of Law and Politics.” Medtronic says that Kyle is not a part of its legal defense and has never represented the company.

Medtronic is the world’s largest medical device manufacturer. Its Sprint Fidelis defibrillators were removed from the market in 2007 because of faulty wires that shocked patients unnecessarily. The defibrillators are blamed for numerous injuries and deaths.

According to the Associated Press, Judge Kyle is “not aware of any formal attempt to remove him from the case.” He also said that that he felt no need to disclose his son’s relationship with the law firm because his son practices criminal law and “would not work with a company like Medtronic.”

Judge Kyle claims that he threw out the lawsuits against Medtronic because the company’s faulty devices had been deemed safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration. The doctrine of pre-emption, a legal premise that took shape during the Bush administration, allows federal laws to trump state laws. Therefore, since the federal government said that the Sprint Fidelis defibrillators were safe, people harmed by them cannot turn to state law and thus have little or no legal recourse.

Which begs the question: if judges, politicians, and FDA regulators are all attached to big corporations, can the FDA’s stamp of approval on medical devices and drugs ever be trusted to protect the American people?

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Judge tosses medtronic lawsuits, doesn’t disclose son’s ties

And change is apparently what the FDA needs the most. On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that from 2003 to 2007, the FDA cleared 228 medical devices for the market without a complete evaluation of their safety and effectiveness. Some of the devices were intended for sensitive and risky uses, such as pacemakers and heart valves, and a few have since been recalled because of malfunction or other problems.

“It all adds up to less-than-rigorous rigorous device review, and it’s placing tens of thousands of Americans at risk,” said Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen’s health research group, in a report by the Associated Press.

The GAO report (link to PDF of report) did not evaluate the number of people, if any, who were harmed by the hastily approved devices. Instead it focused on the approval process for medical devices, calling into question why FDA scientists are routinely pressured to approve of medical machinery against their professional judgment.

A factor that may be contributing to the FDA’s problem is the quickening pace of technology development. Manufacturers of high-tech medical devices have made giant strides in the past decade, and so the number of devices trying to enter the market has grown. The number of upgraded products up for review has also increased. As technology began to outpace the FDA’s approval process, which was established as a three-tier system in 1976, the Federal government pressured the FDA to speed things up.

With drug companies and medical device manufacturers seeking refuge in legal preemption, the current FDA approval system can be a formula for disaster for the American public. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal (FDA) approval of medical devices could displace many laws on the state level. In other words, someone who has been harmed by an FDA-approved medical device may have little legal recourse in state courts.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA says approval of medical devices was rushed

As we have reported earlier, a Texas man filed a lawsuit against Medtronic, claiming that his cardioverter defibrillator containing a Sprint Fidelis lead gave him several unexpected and unnecessary shocks, causing excruciating pain and emotional stress.

To ensure that the software update fulfills its purpose and protects patients as it was designed to do, Medtronic will actively monitor the update during actual use.

According to Daniel Schultz, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Medtronic’s software update “will provide Sprint Fidelis patients with the reassurance that their defibrillator is being monitored around the clock. While the software doesn’t fix the fracture itself, it may help identify the fracture earlier, allowing patients to see their physicians sooner.”

Implantable defibrillators deliver a pulse of energy through a thin electronic wire (the lead) whenever it detects a rhythmic abnormality in the heart. The shock sets the heart back into a normal rhythm.

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › FDA approves software update for faulty defibrillator

Plaintiff Donald Jackson received an implantable cardioverter defibrillator containing a Sprint Fidelis lead in 2006, which he says gave him unexpected and medically unnecessary shocks, causing excruciating pain.

The shocks caused “great physical, emotional and psychological suffering and extreme anxiety,” placing Jackson in “imminent apprehension of death,” the complaint says. It adds that Jackson is now prescribed mood-stabilizing drugs. And, as a result of problems with the lead, he has an increased risk of death or major heart problems.

The complaint, filed Jan. 18 in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, alleges Medtronic misrepresented the safety of the leads and negligently manufactured, marketed and sold the leads as safe, effective devices. Because such acts were “intentional, reckless and grossly negligent,” the plaintiff is seeking punitive damages.

February 4th, 2008 by Staff with FDA News

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Lead shocks send patient to psychiatrist

Medtronic suspended sales of the Sprint Fidelis Leads in October, after receiving reports of 5 fatalities linked to lead fractures. A lead is a wire that connects an implantable defibrillator to the heart. When it breaks, the defibrillator can emit a massive and painful shock. And in the worse case scenario, the fractured lead can prevent a defibrillator from sending a necessary, lifesaving shock to the heart. Replacing a lead is not an easy procedure, as the invasive surgery can cause the tissue of the blood vessels and heart to tear. In fact, replacing a defibrillator lead is so risky that patients with Sprint Fidelis Leads are being told to leave the defective components in place unless they fracture.

Since it was put on the market in 2004, Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted with 90% of Medtronic’s defibrillators. According to the Wall Street Journal, 268,000 defective Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted worldwide, and about 235,000 people still have these leads in their chests. But in spite of such widespread use, the FDA never required the Sprint Fidelis Leads to be tested in humans before they were marketed, and it did not monitor the device after it was introduced.

Within a couple of years of the Sprint Fidelis Lead’s introduction, emergency rooms around the country began to see patients injured by the fractured device. The problems were disturbing enough that the Minneapolis Heart Institute decided to conduct a data analysis of Sprint Fidelis Lead fracture reports from hospital databases around the country.

The researchers found that the thinner Sprint Fidelis lead had a higher chance of fracturing than the Sprint Quattro. As a result of those findings, the Minneapolis Heart Institute quit using the Sprint Fidelis lead, and the study authors informed the FDA that the defective Sprint Fidelis Lead was “significantly less reliable” than its predecessor. While Medtronic did write a letter to doctors in March 2007 warning them of the Sprint Fidelis lead’s possible problems, the company maintained that the fractures were partly the result of the components not being properly implanted.

Despite being informed of the Minneapolis Heart Institute’s Sprint Fidelis Lead study, the FDA did nothing. An FDA spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal in October that the agency did not require any post-market surveillance of the Sprint Fidelis Lead because “no issues were raised in the premarket review that suggested the need for a postmarket study.” It wasn’t until 5 patients died that the defective Medtronic Sprint Fidelis Lead was removed from the market.

Because of the FDA’s poor oversight of implantable medical devices, thousands of people with Medtronic Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator Leads must live with the knowledge that the defective component could fail at anytime. In general, this poor FDA oversight means that patients with any type of implantable medical device can’t be sure that they don’t face similar dangers.

January 2nd, 2008 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Poor FDA scrutiny of Medtronic Sprint Fidelis lead

Implantable cardioverter defibrillators, or ICDs, provide shocks to stop hearts from potentially dangerous rapid beating. They treat patients at risk for sudden cardiac death, which is the leading natural cause of death in the U.S. In February 2005, Medtronic warned of a potential battery shorting problem in various Marquis-brand defibrillators. According to the Wall Street Journal, 11,000 of the machines were surgically removed and replaced with a different device in the U.S. and 2,000 more such removals took place overseas. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) classified Medtronic’s action as a Class II recall. In a Class II recall, there is either a possibility that the device will cause temporary or reversible health problems, or there is a remote chance that the device will cause serious health problems.

Plaintiffs in the suits against Medtronic argued that the company knew for years that there was a potential for product defects but sold its stock of potentially defective devices and didn’t advise patients that safer devices were available. The company has argued that it fulfilled every obligation in terms of reporting the problem, including seeking and receiving FDA approval in 2003 to implement battery design changes. Yet in spite its claims that it acted properly, Medtronic is now settling thousands of defective Marquis Defibrillator Lawsuits. The company will pay a total of $114 million, as it settles 2,682 cases for $95.6 million as well as $18.5 million in attorneys’ fee.

Medtronic, the largest manufacturer of ICDs, has had other problems with many of its devices. In April 2004 Medtronic announced that it was recalling its Micro Jewel II Model 7223Cx and the Medtronic GEM DR Model 7271 ICDs after they had been linked to at least four deaths and one injury. Medtronic said at the time that some of the recalled defibrillators failed to charge properly, resulting in the late delivery or no delivery of cardiac shock therapy. In January 2007 the FDA announced that the agency started an investigation looking into accusations by a former Medtronic engineer that the medical-device company didn’t sufficiently test its new Concerto cardiac device for patients with congestive heart failure. The Concerto device is one that can resynchronize the heartbeat of a patient and also provide backup defibrillator capability to save the patient’s life if the heart goes into cardiac arrest.

In October 2007, Medtronic announced that it was suspending sales of the Sprint Fidelis lead, a vital component in its implantable defibrillators. According to Medtronic, the Sprint Fidelis lead, a wire that connects the Medtronic defibrillator to the heart, could fracture inside a patient’s blood vessel, delivering a massive electrical jolt. This malfunction can cause extreme pain, or in the worse case scenario, it can be fatal. At least 5 deaths have already been linked to a malfunctioning Sprint Fidelis lead used with an implantable Medtronic defibrillator.

January 1st, 2008 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic settles defective defibrillator lawsuits for $114 Million

His implanted cardiac defibrillator (ICD) had sent 800 volts of electricity into his heart muscle, a jolt doctors compare to being kicked by a horse. Then it did it again. And again.

“I was hollering every time it hit me,” Jackson said. “It hit me six times … it’s a good wallop. I began to think it wasn’t going to stop.”

As their granddaughter screamed, Mattie Jackson called 911. She assumed her husband was suffering from an extreme rapid heartbeat, a life-threatening episode he had experienced twice in 2004.

The ICD was implanted to shock Jackson when his heartbeat speeds out of control. Instead, it seemed to be killing him.

“I was terrified,” said Mrs. Jackson, her eyes watering as she recalled him shrieking in pain.
At the hospital, doctors found that a wire, or “lead,” running from the matchbox-size defibrillator under his collarbone, had broken inside his heart. The two fractured ends had caused a false electrical impulse and triggered the ICD to shock him.

“It was telling the defibrillator something was happening, so it just went shooting out those pulses,” Jackson explained. “It thought something had happened to my heart.”
He was wheeled into emergency surgery the next morning.

“They took me in, cut me open, pulled out the defibrillator, pulled the wire out and put a new wire (and defibrillator) in,” he said.

Despite his surprise at the ordeal, Jackson said his experience wasn’t a fluke.

He and some 235,000 people worldwide received word in October from Medtronic Inc., the world’s largest ICD maker, saying the wire lead threaded into their hearts to deliver shocks at 800 volts a pop was recalled from the market because of its tendency to fracture.

The Sprint Fidelis lead, a newer streamlined wire issued by Medtronic, was fracturing at a rate of 2.3 percent in 30 months, twice the rate of its predecessor.

Medtronic urged patients to visit their cardiologists and have the defibrillators programmed for tighter self-check alerts. Jackson was one of dozens who met with his cardiologist, Dr. Alex Petrakian of Cardiovascular Associates of East Texas.

Petrakian said Medtronic underestimated the faulty wire’s effect, as he noticed problems much earlier than October, and with more frequency. Of his 65 patients implanted with a Sprint Fidelis lead, Jackson was the eighth to present with a fracture.

“We noticed a problem with that wire before they recalled it, so I stopped using it (in July),” Petrakian said. “It was unusual that there were reports from all over the country about docs having the same problems.”

The possibility of a fracture is frightening, he said. While Jackson was shocked six times, others suffering lead fractures have been shocked double or triple that number.

“Sometimes they present to the hospital after having 20 or 30 shocks,” Petrakian said. “Medtronic said those shocks have actually killed; the shocks themselves have caused the heart to stop.”

Complicating the recall is the recommendation that patients with ICDs not have them surgically removed until they malfunction.

“We don’t recommend going in and replacing those wires if they’re not fractured, because of the risk of the procedure itself, risk of infection and other complications,” Petrakian said.

Scar tissue can quickly envelope a lead, which is threaded into one of the heart’s lower right chambers and screwed into the heart muscle, he said.

Instead of invasive remedies, Medtronic is urging closer monitoring of those Sprint Fidelis patients and is footing the bill for the co-pays, procedures and recovery of complications of related fractures, said Medtronic spokesman Rob Clark.

“This is one of the largest actions ever taken,” Clark said. “We did it proactively, so patients who have Fidelis leads could go into a physician and, in most cases, can have the device reprogrammed; any fractures or weakening that develops, they’ll be able to see that in advance so appropriate action can be taken.”

But 64-year-old Athens resident Ruby Barrett said that doesn’t come close to allaying her fears.

Her ICD (and its recalled lead) was implanted just 39 days prior to Medtronic’s announcement. She was sickened by the news of the recall, she said, and feels helpless, like she’s waiting for her ICD to malfunction.

“I hope to God not, but if anything goes wrong in there I’m probably going to die,” said Barrett, who suffers from congestive heart failure. “I don’t want to go out of here being shocked to death.”

ICDs are revolutionary treatment for patients prone to irregular, slow or fast heartbeats that put them at risk for sudden cardiac arrest. Medtronic estimates some 15,000 people have received life-saving shocks since the equipment’s inception.

Petrakian said he and other cardiovascular surgeons implant some 500 to 600 ICDs each year in East Texas. But the wear and tear on leads is great, he said; the heart is a volatile space.

“Leads don’t last forever,” Petrakian said. “With every heartbeat, the lead is moving. It flexes back and forth, and so you can just imagine, flexing back and forth millions of times puts pressure on the lead.”

Clark agreed. The lead’s design, manipulation of the lead during the implantation procedure, the harsh environment of the heart and the patient’s body type can all contribute to the equipment’s viability, he said.

Medtronic, a $12.3 billion company, reported a 16 percent sales drop in its 2007 fiscal second quarter, about a $150 to $200 million loss, Clark estimated.

But Medtronic is no stranger to working out equipment flaws. This month, the company agreed to spend $114 million to settle 2,682 lawsuits related to an earlier line of ICDs that suffered a potential battery shorting problem announced in February 2005.

Petrakian said a handful of his patients are considering legal action after October’s recall, but said most of it is due to anxiety.

“I’d be anxious about it,” he said. “Having a recalled lead, especially if the incidence is that high.”

Mrs. Jackson said she’s just relieved the lead is gone from her husband’s chest. She’s glad to have gotten through it.

“If it wasn’t for our church family, God, prayer,” she said, “I don’t know what we would have done.”

December 27th, 2007 by LAUREN GROVER with Tyler Paper.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Recalled heart implant gives man shock of his life

Medtronic suspended sales of the Sprint Fidelis Leads after receiving reports of 5 fatalities linked to lead fractures. A lead is a wire that connects an implantable defibrillator to the heart. It is through the lead that a defibrillator is able to sense when a patient’s heart rhythm is out of sync. When it breaks, the defibrillator can emit a massive and painful shock. And in the worse case scenario, the fractured lead can prevent a defibrillator from sending a necessary, lifesaving shock to the heart. Replacing a lead is not an easy procedure, as the invasive surgery can cause the tissue of the blood vessels and heart to tear.

Lead replacement is also an expensive procedure, and can cost in excess of $12,000. And even though it made the defective Sprint Fidelis Lead that is now causing so many patients so much anxiety, Medtronic is doing little to absorb the costs of lead replacement. When it first announced the Sprint Fidelis Lead recall in October, Medtronic said would cover the cost of a new lead, as well as pay $800 in medical costs for patients whose lead had fractured. But later, the company extended that coverage to patients without fractures, in cases where doctors advise removing the leads because of the patient’s specific medical condition. Even with Medtronic’s contribution, however, patients who have their Sprint Fidelis leads replaced could still be left with a large medical bill. So far insurers are deciding whether to cover the replacement operation on a case-by-case basis, unless the lead has already fractured.

Patients whose doctors don’t recommend the removal of the Sprint Fidelis Lead have little choice to wait and hope it does not fail. Their defibrillators will need to be reprogrammed and monitored, to improve the odds of catching any developing fractures early. But this precaution does not come with a guarantee that all Sprint Fidelis Lead failures will be caught before a patient is injured, and the component could still fracture without warning.

The number of people left to worry that their Sprint Fidelis Lead will one day fracture is staggering. Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted with 90% of Medtronic’s defibrillators. According to the Wall Street Journal, 268,000 defective Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted worldwide, and about 235,000 people still have these leads in their chests. It will be a long time – if ever – before all of these Sprint Fidelis Lead patients can feel secure.

December 12th, 2007 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Sprint Fidelis defibrillator lead patients faced with difficult dilemma

In Canada, 2,416 patients had the Medtronic defibrillators implanted as of February 2005, with 613 of them having been removed or replaced as of June 2007.

In 2005, Medtronic announced that it was recalling two heart defibrillators because they had been linked to at least four deaths and one injury. These devices are used to shock the heart into normal rhythm after patients suffer irregular heartbeat or fibrillation, which are rapid, life-threatening arrhythmia’s, originating in the lower chambers of the heart.

The defibrillators are implanted surgically in the chest. When a cardiac arrhythmia occurs, the capacitor is charged and the device delivers the appropriate shock. Medtronic said that some of the recalled defibrillators failed to charge properly, a defect which can result in the late delivery or no delivery of cardiac shock therapy. Medtronic had actually discovered the problem with its defibrillators in 2003, but did not disclose the problems immediately.

In October, Medtronic agreed to pay $130 million to settle U.S. claims it hid the defects in the defibrillators, $55 million more than it proposed in a July settlement, people familiar with the agreement said at the time. The company agreed to the higher amount after more claims were filed over the heart defibrillators than the parties expected, the people said.

But the October settlement was not the end of Medtronic’s defibrillator woes. That same month, Medtronic suspended sales of the Sprint Fidelis Leads after receiving reports of 5 fatalities linked to lead fractures. A lead is a wire that connects an implantable defibrillator to the heart. It is through the lead that a defibrillator is able to sense when a patient’s heart rhythm is out of sync. When it breaks, the defibrillator can emit a massive and painful shock. And in the worse case scenario, the fractured lead can prevent a defibrillator from sending a necessary, lifesaving shock to the heart.

Just last week, lawyers for Medtronic went before the US Supreme Court to ask that people injured by defective medical devices and drugs should not be allowed to sue manufacturers if those products have been approved by the Food & Drug Administration.

December 10th, 2007 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic dfibrillator cass ation lawsuit gets go ahead in Canada

It was reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that the global medical device manufacturer acknowledged the federal investigations as part of a filing with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission).On October 15, 2007, a nationwide Medtronic recall was issued for all models of the Sprint Fidelis defibrillator lead. Defects in the lead could cause the thin electrical wire to fracture or break, resulting in electrical shock or device failure.

A lot of controversy has surrounded the approval of this device by the FDA, since no specific testing was required before it was introduced in 2004. In addition, many have expressed concerns about the timing of the defibrillator lead recall, as the Company delayed removal of the device from the market for many months, allowing thousands of people to receive the lead which was known to be dangerous and defective.

Medtronics indicates that the Senate Finance Committee has requested information regarding the defibrillator lead recall as well as information about alleged payments made to doctors by the company. Shortly after the recall, the company was also the subject of a letter from the U.S. Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was sent to the commissioner of the FDA inquiring about the Sprint Fidelis lead’s approval process and when the FDA first learned about the risk that the leads could fracture.

A separate Medtronic investigation has been initiated by the Justice Department, through the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The U.S. attorney requested that the company provide information about payments made to doctors outside of the United States. The alleged payments could be in violation off the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is designed to prevent companies from bribing foreign government officials.

Any defibrillators implanted since 2004 could have the Sprint Fidelis lead. To determine if you, a friend or family member may be impacted by the recall, contact your doctor for medical advice and contact our office for a free legal consultation.

December 6th, 2007 by Austin Kirk with Permalink

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic investigations initiated by federal government

Following the recall, it was learned that Medtronic had been receiving reports that indicated the Sprint Fidelis Lead had a higher-than-normal fracture rate for months. The incident has raised questions about the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of medical devices, and of the Medtronic’s response to early reports of lead problems.

Medtronic has acknowledged in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that the Senate Finance Committee has requested information about ties between the medical-device industry and practicing physicians and information about Medtronic’s suspended distribution of its Sprint Fidelis family of defibrillation leads. The Senate panel is probing the FDA’s oversight of medical-device components.

Medtronic said in the same SEC filing that it is the subject of a Justice Department probe into illegal physician payments. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania asked for information on payments or gifts to physicians or physician’s groups related to the purchase of the company’s cardiac stents and cardiac-therapy devices.

The U.S. attorney also asked Medtronic to provide documents related to its relationship with a specific customer. The customer wasn’t identified in the SEC filing. In September, the SEC began an informal probe of Medtronic, seeking information about possible violations of the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, which is meant to stop bribes to foreign officials.

This is not the first time Medtronic’s relationships with physicians has come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, requested information from Medtronic about the company’s payments to orthopedic surgeons, and questioned whether they improperly influenced physician decisions about which products to use.

Monetary agreements with physician consultants are common in the medical device industry, where doctors are paid for their work developing products and then, in some cases, for helping to train other doctors in how to use the products. Medtronic insists that it only provides physicians with compensation that is fair, relative to current market values, and is compliant with the law.

December 6th, 2007 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic faces investigations over defective Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator lead

If Medtronic is successful, the thousands of people injured by the company’s defective devices, as well as those hurt by faulty drugs and devices made by other manufacturers, would not be able to receive compensation for their injuries in state courts.

The Medtronic Supreme Court case stems from a lawsuit filed by the family of a New York man who suffered severe medical complications when a Medtronic-made balloon catheter burst during a procedure to clear his arteries. The man’s family sued Medtronic, claiming his injuries were caused by the catheter’s negligent design, manufacture and labeling, despite the fact the device had won FDA approval. The case was thrown out by a US District Court judge and then by the US Court of Appeals. The family is now appealing to the US Supreme Court.

Medtronic is arguing that because Congress granted the FDA the authority to determine whether products are safe and effective, state judges and juries should not be allowed to second-guess the FDA once a product is approved for use. Now, the Supreme Court must decide if Congress intended to bar state law claims when it gave the FDA authority to regulate medical devices in 1976.

That law clearly says that states can’t maintain requirements that are different from federal standards. But Congress didn’t specify that those federal standards preempted state common law claims, and device manufacturers didn’t argue that they did until recently. Medtronic and other companies are claiming that allowing state personal injury lawsuits against the makers of defective medical devices and drugs would amount to a state “requirement” different from FDA requirements because such complaints are based on state laws.

Consumer and patient advocates are vigorously opposed to Medtronic’s arguments. They fear that by removing the threat of lawsuits, manufacturers like Medtronic would have no incentive to keep devices and drugs that they know are defective off the market. And the FDA cannot be trusted to keep consumers safe, because the agency has approved some drugs – like Vioxx- and devices based on sloppy or falsified test data. Patient advocates insist that often, lawsuits are the only way evidence of such fraud or faulty tests ever come to light.

Finally, consumer advocates fear that the FDA is simply not up to the job of keeping unsafe drugs and medical devices away from the public. A report issued Friday by three members of the FDA’s own Science Board said that the agency was so poorly organized and short of funds that it could not adequately protect the public.

December 4th, 2007 by Staff with NewsInferno.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic asks Supreme Court to ban personal injury lawsuits

The good news, according to a recent article in Medical Device Week, is that medical technology is moving towards a safe and effective way to remove leads if they become damaged or dangerous to the patient.

Leads can become hazardous for any number of reasons, whether it is a question of faulty manufacturing like the defective Medtronic leads, or because they become infected or blocked over time. In the 1980s, most implantable leads were removed by mechanical sheaths. However, they were eventually replaced by power sheaths which were in turn abandoned for the newer laser sheaths. Cook Medical in Bloomington, Indiana has taken a more traditional approach in creating Evolution, their new tool for defibrillator lead removal and throwback to the mechanical sheaths of the ‘80s.

According to Cook Medical, the new Evolution mechanical dilator sheath boasts improvements over the traditional mechanical sheaths and has none of the drawbacks which plague the power and laser sheaths of today. The design of the original mechanical sheaths caused them to be somewhat awkward and require a large degree of physicality to operate.

The new Evolution design has eliminated this concern. They are not as bulky or as costly as the current electronic sheaths, and they are able to avoid the unintentional damage to surrounding tissue sometimes caused by their electronic counterparts. The mechanical Evolution does not require the additional capital equipment, annual maintenance and calibration, biomedical inspection, electricity source, or on-site laser officer necessitated by a laser sheath. Reportedly, the mechanical sheath also maximizes physician control.

The one silver lining in the Medtronic defibrillator lead recall debacle is that more effort is going into improving the technology for removal of defective defibrillator leads. Many Medtronic patients are reading this in fear that they will have defective lead wires in their chest for the rest of their lives and this breakthrough gives some hope to these patients. Hopefully, one day in the near future changing out leads will be simple surgery.

December 3rd, 2007 by Ronald V. Miller, Jr. with The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Possible good news for medtronic defibrillator patients with defective leads

“My pacemaker was implanted in 1999. It worked very nicely and it turned my life around,” Adams says. “But my heart was wearing out and I needed to have a defibrillator put in. After a discussion with my electrophysiologist I decided to have the defibrillator put in on the left side. I made that decision based on how long these devices are supposed to last and because the left side was a clear route to the heart. My pacemaker had been on the right-hand side, so I decided that the defibrillator should be on the left-hand side, which hadn’t been used.”

Adams’ defibrillator was implanted on July 6, 2006. Three months ago, Adams went swimming when her defibrillator gave her an unnecessary shock. She says that it was painful but the shock only happened one time so rather than seeking medical attention right away, she spoke to a Medtronic representative at her check in.

“I don’t know if people know this, but Medtronic’s people do the checking on you,” Adams says. “They do the hook-ups and the check-ins, so you deal with them a lot. When I mentioned the shock, they told me that the pool triggered it. But I swim in that pool all the time. It has never happened other than that one time. Now I’m worried because I don’t know if I have a faulty lead.”

Adams says she does not know what she is supposed to do now that her defibrillator has shocked her. “When I felt the zap, I thought maybe the leads can’t hold the power from the defibrillator,” Adams says. “Medtronic hasn’t made it clear why the leads fray. Is it the movement and extra exercise or is it the power from the defibrillator? Am I supposed to just continue on with the leads in my chest and once 30 months has passed we’ll know for sure if my leads are frayed?

“I’m scared of what the device is doing. I’m not comfortable with it. How do you know it is working? I feel so angry because I had a pacemaker in one side and now I’ve got a defibrillator in the other side and it might be messed up.”

Adams says that Medtronic representatives have not been helpful in answering her questions. In fact, some have been downright rude. “I went to one meeting with a Medtronic representative and there was a woman there who appeared to be with Medtronic, too.” Adams says. “I was talking about how worried I am and saying that if Medtronic knew about these problems, they shouldn’t have put the leads in. Then I said that I was happy that at least my devices have kept me alive so far. She said to me, ‘I’m glad you’re finally grateful about something.’ I just said to her, ‘It’s not in your chest. You have no idea. You’re not the one who has to be worried about it working.’

“Prior to this incident I felt safe with Medtronic. I would never have said anything bad about them. But after this I feel very let down and uncertain. I feel like they knew about the problems a long time before it came out. I think they know more than they say. They should step up to the plate and be honest about what’s going on. There has to be more to the story than just ‘five people are dead.’ I want to know the truth.

“No one has ever spoken to me about faulty leads. No one mentioned that it was a risk. It seems like they should have said something. How can they get by with not telling the truth?”

December 20th, 2007 by Heidi Turner with LawyersandSettlements.com

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic should be honest about Sprint Fidelis leads

Medtronic suspended sales of the Sprint Fidelis Leads in October, after receiving reports of 5 fatalities linked to lead fractures. A lead is a wire that connects an implantable defibrillator to the heart. When it breaks, the defibrillator can emit a massive and painful shock. And in the worse case scenario, the fractured lead can prevent a defibrillator from sending a necessary, lifesaving shock to the heart.

The Sprint Fidelis Lead was designed to replace Medtronic’s Sprint Quattro models, and it was one of the thinnest defibrillator lead wires on the market. Prior to the recall, Sprint Fidelis Leads had been implanted with 90% of Medtronic’s defibrillators since being introduced in 2004. According to the Wall Street Journal, 268,000 defective Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted worldwide, and about 235,000 people still have these leads in their chests.

Within a couple of years of the Sprint Fidelis Lead’s introduction, emergency rooms around the country began to see patients injured by the fractured device. The problems were disturbing enough that the Minneapolis Heart Institute decided to conduct a data analysis of Sprint Fidelis Lead fracture reports from hospital databases around the country. The researchers found that the thinner Sprint Fidelis Lead had a higher chance of fracturing than the Sprint Quattro. As a result of those findings, the Minneapolis Heart Institute quit using the Sprint Fidelis Lead, and the study authors informed the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) that the defective Sprint Fidelis Lead was “significantly less reliable” than its predecessor.

While Medtronic did write a letter to doctors in March 2007 warning them of the Sprint Fidelis lead’s possible problems, the company maintained that the fractures were partly the result of the components not being properly implanted.

But even as it sent out that letter, Medtronic was gathering evidence that the Sprint Fidelis Lead was more prone to fracturing than the Sprint Quattro. According to the Wall Street Journal, data collected by Medtronic revealed that from late 2004 through February 2007, there had been more than 200 fractures reported for Sprint Fidelis Leads. That was compared to 64 for Medtronic’s Sprint Quattro Leads.

Then, sometime between August and September of this year, Medtronic said it learned of 5 deaths linked to Sprint Fidelis Lead fractures. And by October, the Medtronic analysis had revealed that the defective Sprint Fidelis Leads had a 2.3% fracture rate within 30 months of implantation. Those grim statistics where finally enough to persuade Medtronic to recall the defective Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator Lead.

The Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator Lead recall sent Medtronic scrambling to get more Sprint Quattro models onto the market. Despite that, the company says it won’t have any trouble meeting the demand for Sprint Quattro Leads. In light of the recall, it looks as though there was never any need for Medtronic to replace the more reliable Sprint Quattro Defibrillator Leads.

November 23rd, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Sprint Fidelis defibrillator lead wire recall

At the time of the recall, Medtronic took great pains to underscore that the Fidelis leads had a 2.3 percent failure rate after 30 months of implantation. That compared to a 1 percent failure rate among the company’s Quattro leads, which have been around longer and are wider in diameter.

On a conference call with analysts Monday, Medtronic’s president of Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management, Pat Mackin, said the company erred on the side of caution by pulling the Fidelis lead.
“We made a very conservative call with this lead. There is no statistically significant difference between Fidelis and Quattro, but we figured it would become so over time, which is why we made the action we did,” said Mackin.

“We have a rule of thumb, and that is if you see three of the same thing at one center, you’d better pay attention to it, because it’s likely not due to chance,” said Dr. Robert Hauser, a cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute.

Hauser’s clinic stopped using Medtronic’s Fidelis lead in January after tracking six incidences of injuries from it.

In March, Hauser and his colleagues submitted an article about the problems they saw to the journal Heart Rhythm. That same month, Medtronic issued a letter to patients and doctors advising them of concerns about the Fidelis lead.

Hauser says Medtronic was actually very cooperative in addressing his worries about the product. And he believes Medtronic’s claim that the company had to collect more data before it made sense to pull the leads from distribution.

But Hauser takes a less generous view of how the Food and Drug Administration handled things.
“When Medtronic sent a letter to physicians stating they ‘may’ have a problem, from that point on, in my view, the ball was in the FDA’s court,” Hauser says. “In retrospect, what might’ve been done was for the FDA to say simply, ‘Look, if you think you have a problem, why don’t you stop implanting until you figure out what the problem is.’”

Sid Wolf of the watchdog group Public Citizen thinks both the FDA and Medtronic moved too slowly. He says that their responses remind him of Guidant’s device problems in 2005.

Minneapolis Heart Institute doctors, including Hauser, had alerted Guidant to device failures, and the doctors later accused the company of refusing to acknowledge the problems publicly.

Wolf sees a similarity in the events prompting Fidelis leads to be taken off the market.

“When I saw the announcement that this was being taken off, and the horrible self-congratulatory statements that were being made both by the FDA and Medtronic, ‘We’ve done a much better job here than we’d done with Guidant,’ I said to myself, I doubt that that’s the case. And the more that one looks into this, it starts smelling like the Guidant thing,” says Wolf.

But both the FDA and Medtronic say it’s not realistic to pull thousands of products from the marketplace with limited data.

Medtronic spokesman Rob Clark says the company did hear reports from such individuals that had stopped using the Fidelis leads, because they had seen a number of injuries.

But Clark says Medtronic also looked at other medical centers, which had done hundreds of Fidelis lead implantations without a hitch. The overall picture wasn’t clear.

“Often when a design issue or a manufacturing issue is associated with a product, you will see that playing out across all centers, and not just pockets of centers,” Clark says.

That’s an assessment with which a number of experts agree. Dr. William Maisell is director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He says what was important for Medtronic to ascertain was not the number of failures on its hands, but the rate of failures.

Maisel favored a recall for the Medtronic leads. But in some ways, he thinks letting patients and doctors make informed choices about using the product is even more important than the recall itself. He gives this example.

“With the Fidelis, the fracture rate is 2.3 percent, but it’s also one of the smallest and thinnest leads on the market,” says Maisel. “So I can imagine a clinical situation where I might be willing to accept a higher fracture rate on a lead in exchange for its very thin and small, size, if I had a patient or a vessel that was very thin, and that was the only lead I could fit down there.”

Daniel Schultz, the director of the FDA’s device center, says in the end, a lot of factors have to be considered in any recall. He says in the Medtronic case, the dramatic tipping point was hard to find.

“It’s not always black and white, where you get to a line and say ‘Aha, it’s clear, it’s crystal clear,’” says Schultz. “Many times it’s going from white through this gray zone, of weighing the various consequences and deciding when to make the decision.”

Schultz says one way to make that decision easier going forward is for companies like Medtronic to gather better data on leads implanted in patients, so that problems can be identified at an earlier stage.

Some observers say that’s something the FDA itself should mandate. Schultz gave no indication that’s likely.

November 19th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Did Medtronic act quickly enough on recall

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that in rare instances, the company’s Riata line of defibrillator leads are poking holes through the hearts of cardiac patients rather than remaining attached to the heart wall.

The leads connect a patients heart to an implantable defibrillator, which helps maintain a proper heart rhythm. The cases have been reported to the Food and Drug Administration.

The newspaper said the most recent cases involve the accounts of four patients and are expected to be posted online Monday by the medical journal Pace.

In October, Medtronic Inc., recalled its Sprint Fidelis lead wires after conceding that the device broke more often than expected and said five deaths may be attributed to the failures. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has said the FDA received 27 failure reports on Sprint Fidelis leads in the first two months of 2006. That figure surged to 152 reports during the first two months of 2007.

St. Jude said Monday it has sent a response to the Pace journal, which is expected to be published in the December issue, reaffirming the Riata leads performance and safety. The company said its data show that the incidence rate of perforations with Riata is below or at the low end of what has been reported in clinical literature.

November 12th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Safety concerns over defibrillator wires

Back in March, Medtronic sent letters to doctors warning them about the risk of fractures in leads and reminding doctors of the proper way to use the leads. By this point, some doctors had already realized that the Sprint Fidelis leads were prone to fracture. However, patients were not made aware of the problem until March, when Medtronic recalled the leads. Many patients are now concerned that they have defective leads that may fracture, causing them to experience serious, unnecessary shocks or causing their defibrillator to not administer a necessary shock.

Meanwhile, a shareholder who alleges that the company concealed information about defective lead wires has also filed a lawsuit. The suit seeks unspecified damages from Medtronic and claims that Medtronic’s actions constitute securities fraud.

According to the lawsuit, since October 15, the day that sales of Sprint Fidelis leads were suspended, shares in Medtronic have dropped from $56.33 to $45.99. At the time, Medtronic reported that at least five confirmed deaths have been linked to defective lead wires. The lawsuit seeks class action status on behalf of those who bought Medtronic stock between June 25, 2007 and October 15, 2007, the period during which Medtronic allegedly made false and misleading statements. Among the statements was a claim in a securities filing that the Sprint Fidelis leads had a “strong market acceptance,” and a claim that there was increasing clinical data to support the use of Sprint Fidelis leads.

However, by January 2007, Medtronic allegedly already had 679 reports of injuries caused by defective leads. According to the lawsuit that number grew to 795 by April 30, 2007 and then jumped to 1,053 injuries reported two months later. Furthermore, Medtronic learned in February 2007 that the Minneapolis Heart Institute would stop using Spring Fidelis leads in its surgeries and replace them with the Sprint Quattro leads.

Medtronic has estimated that the failure rate for its leads is around 2.3 percent. That is just over two times the failure rate of the company’s other leads. However, the risk of serious complications associated with replacing the leads can be as high as seven percent. Replacing the Sprint Fidelis leads can cause damage to the veins that the leads run through.

Patients who have recalled Sprint Fidelis leads implanted are understandably concerned that their leads could fracture and fail at any time, putting their lives at risk. Those who have already had their leads fail report that the unnecessary shocks are incredibly painful.

November 15th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic Sprint Fidelis leads facing more lawsuits

The lawsuits were filed against Minnesota-based Medtronic by Kenneth Carlile of Kansas City and Phillip S. Brown, a Johnson County resident.

The complainants contend that Medtronic was negligent in its design of electronic wires – known as SprintFidelis leads – that connect the defibrillators to patients’ hearts.

Medtronic in October voluntarily recalled the Sprint Fidelis wires because they can fracture, which causes them to give unnecessary shocks or not function at all. Medtronic said it had identified five patient deaths “in which a Sprint Fidelis lead may have been a possible or likely contributing factor.”

The Carlile lawsuit was filed in federal court in Kansas City and the Brown lawsuit was filed in federal court in Kansas City, Kan. Carlile received his implantation at the University of Kansas Hospital in November 2004, and Brown received his implantation at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park in August. The hospitals are not defendants in the lawsuits.

Each lawsuit contains six counts, including allegations of negligence and failure to warn patients of problems with the Sprint Fidelis wires earlier.

Medtronic spokesman Rob Clark said the company did not comment on the specifics of litigation filed against it, adding that lawsuits could be expected when the company recalled products.

November 12th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Two men sue company over design of defibrillator

The 54-year-old Minneapolis woman has stared down a rare breed of late-stage cancer. And last year, she technically died after her heart stopped beating, but luckily her near-fatal attack occurred just outside Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina.

She left the hospital with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) made by Medtronic Inc. tucked inside her chest, a kind of medical-device insurance policy intended to shock her heart back into rhythm if she goes into sudden cardiac arrest.

“I have faced the darkest day,” she said recently.

But on Oct. 15, Lewis learned that Fridley-based Medtronic had pulled a key component of her defibrillator system, called a lead, off the market because it may fracture in the body. A lead is an insulated wire that connects the stopwatch-size portion of the device containing the battery to the heart.

“After all that I’ve been through, I just didn’t think it was going to be me,” she said.

Like many of the 235,000 patients worldwide implanted with Medtronic’s Sprint Fidelis lead, Lewis immediately called her doctor for an appointment.

She, and many others, have embarked on a series of phone calls to doctors and insurers that may prove confusing and frustrating.

All face similar options: Remove the leads — an often difficult surgery — and replace it with a new one. Leave the old lead in the body and snake a new one in the chest using a different vein. Or reprogram the defibrillator to new settings that may detect fractures.

That option would leave the leads in place, and they would have to be frequently tracked using sophisticated monitoring equipment.

Medtronic and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have advised patients to leave the leads intact. But for many patients, the choice isn’t so clear-cut. The potential rate of fracture is small, at 2.3 percent, but a risk nonetheless.

Lewis, a computer science graduate student at the University of Minnesota, didn’t like the odds of potential failure for her Medtronic lead. Plus, she already had experienced odd shocking sensations across her chest on several occasions before the lead recall, a possible indication that it may be defective.

When she asked her doctor at Fairview Southdale about having the lead removed, she was told that the Mayo Clinic was better equipped for the procedure, but that extracting it was considered an “elective” procedure, which meant she would have to pay for it.

Some major health plans in the state — including Medica, HealthPartners and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota — say they will cover the cost of replacing the Sprint Fidelis leads if that’s what the doctors order. Medtronic says that it will provide new leads free and cover as much as $800 in non-reimbursed medical expenses — but only if a lead is fractured. The device’s warranty doesn’t cover prophylactic removal, according to a company spokesman.

A few days after Lewis’ initial doctor’s visit, a scheduler from Mayo called to set up an appointment. “We’re not going to recommend that you replace it,” Lewis says she was told. Lewis couldn’t believe her ears — she hadn’t even seen the Mayo doctor yet.

The experience has left Lewis feeling whipsawed. “At this point, I just want them to turn this thing off,” she said.

The advocate

After the news broke on the Sprint Fidelis lead, Lisa Salberg sprang into action. As a defibrillator patient and founder of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) Association, Salberg is pressing for stepped-up surveillance of lead performance that is funded and conducted independently of the medical device industry. (Companies track the performances of their own devices.)

She presented her ideas this month to high-powered cardiologists at a major clinical meeting in Florida. She’s working with Dr. Robert Hauser of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation — a whistleblower in the recall of Guidant Corp. defibrillators two years ago, and a diligent tracker of heart device performance — to set up a system that could spot potential problems in devices such as the Fidelis lead early on.

But Salberg, of Rockaway Township, N.J., is personally affected by the Sprint Fidelis news, too. Her 12-year-old daughter and 72-year-old father have HCM, a genetic heart condition — and both have implanted Sprint Fidelis leads.

“It was really hard to sit my 12-year-old down and tell her that she’s been recalled,” Salberg said. “But she took it really well.” If a lead is failing it will often make a beeping sound to alert the patient. This provided some angst for Salberg’s daughter, a middle-schooler.

“Will my ICD beep in the hallway at school?” she asked her mom.

For now, doctors will monitor Salberg’s daughter’s and father’s leads, but the watching and waiting is difficult, at best.

The fixer

Dr. Pierce Vatterott, a cardiac electrophysiologist with the St. Paul Heart Clinic, wasn’t terribly surprised to hear the Sprint Fidelis news.

In March, Medtronic sent a letter to doctors alerting them to the fracture problem, and reinforcing the proper way to use the devices. Vatterott and his colleagues had noticed a tendency of Sprint Fidelis leads to fracture well before the company stopped selling them.

The gregarious Vatterott is known in Minnesota — and beyond — as an expert in lead extraction. The most difficult and tricky cases often land on his and his colleagues’ desks.

Leads are sometimes hard to remove from the body because scar tissue tends to form over them. Doctors often use a special laser to take them out.

In a procedure that took nearly five hours at United Hospital in St. Paul last week, Vatterott extracted two (non-Fidelis) leads from a 59-year-old man and inserted two more, as well as a new pacemaker. Despite the difficulty and duration of the procedure, Vatterott was elated. “I’m pumped for this patient. He’s going to feel so much better,” he said.

“The Fidelis is relatively easy to take out,” Vatterott said. While the lead is thinner than most others on the market, it’s not as robust, he added. And, if it’s used on younger, more active, patients — which is often the case — more stress is put on the lead, occasionally causing it to fracture.

After the Medtronic news broke, patients and physicians began calling Vatterott’s office. So far, he’s extracted one Fidelis lead from a patient who requested that it be removed.

The recall news “scares patients,” he said. “It’s an unknown. They don’t know what it means.”

While a potentially faulty device is always alarming, Vatterott relishes the challenge of his unique specialty. “You have to be creative on the spot in these procedures,” he said. “You never know what will happen next.”

November 10th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › A patient an advocate a fixer

Medtronic even went so far as to blame physicians for the problems, claiming that they weren’t implanting the defective Sprint Fidelis Lead properly. What’s even worse, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which never required the defective medical device to undergo clinical testing, was oblivious to the increasing reports of Sprint Fidelis Lead problems.

Medtronic suspended sales of the Sprint Fidelis Leads in October, after receiving reports of 5 fatalities linked to lead fractures. A lead is a wire that connects an implantable defibrillator to the heart. When it breaks, the defibrillator can emit a massive and painful shock. And in the worse case scenario, the fractured lead can prevent a defibrillator from sending a necessary, lifesaving shock to the heart.

Replacing a lead is not an easy procedure, as the invasive surgery can cause the tissue of the blood vessels and heart to tear. In fact, replacing a defibrillator lead is so risky that patients with Sprint Fidelis Leads are being told to leave the defective components in place unless they fracture.

The Sprint Fidelis Lead was designed to replace Medtronic’s Sprint Quattro models, and it is one of the thinnest defibrillator lead wires on the market. Since it was put on the market in 2004, Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted with 90% of Medtronic’s defibrillators.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 268,000 defective Sprint Fidelis Leads have been implanted worldwide, and about 235,000 people still have these leads in their chests. But in spite of such widespread use, the FDA never required the Sprint Fidelis Leads to be tested in humans before they were marketed, and it did not monitor the device after it was introduced. The FDA considered the Sprint Fidelis Lead to be a modification over the earlier Sprint Quattro, so it only required Medtronic to conduct limited laboratory testing prior to its introduction.

Within a couple of years of the Sprint Fidelis Lead’s introduction, emergency rooms around the country began to see patients injured by the fractured device. The problems were disturbing enough that the Minneapolis Heart Institute decided to conduct a data analysis of Sprint Fidelis Lead fracture reports from hospital databases around the country.

The researchers found that the thinner Sprint Fidelis lead had a higher chance of fracturing than the Sprint Quattro. As a result of those findings, the Minneapolis Heart Institute quit using the Sprint Fidelis lead, and the study authors informed the FDA that the defective Sprint Fidelis Lead was “significantly less reliable” than its predecessor. While Medtronic did write a letter to doctors in March 2007 warning them of the Sprint Fidelis lead’s possible problems, the company maintained that the fractures were partly the result of the components not being properly implanted.

Despite being informed of the Minneapolis Heart Institute’s Sprint Fidelis Lead study, the FDA did nothing. Medtronic had concluded that the number of Sprint Fidelis Lead fractures were not “statistically significant” and blamed most of them on surgical errors.

An FDA spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the agency did not require any post-market surveillance of the Sprint Fidelis Lead because “no issues were raised in the premarket review that suggested the need for a post market study.” But of course, the FDA had not required a premarket clinical trial of the Sprint Fidelis Lead. Because of this, patients and their doctors had no way of knowing that the Sprint Fidelis Lead implanted with a Medtronic defibrillator could be a dangerous ticking time bomb.

But Medtronic knew. It had started a study of the Sprint Fidelis Lead even before it went on the market. According to the Wall Street Journal, that study revealed that from late 2004 through February 2007, there had been more than 200 fractures reported for Sprint Fidelis Leads. That was compared to 64 for Medtronic’s other defibrillator leads. But sources have told the Wall Street Journal that at a July 19 internal meeting to discuss the problem, Medtronic’s management still insisted that the number of Sprint Fidelis Lead fractures was not “statistically significant”.

Then, sometime between August and September of this year, Medtronic said it learned of 5 deaths linked to Sprint Fidelis Lead fractures. And by October, the Medtronic analysis had revealed that the defective Sprint Fidelis Leads had a 2.3% fracture rate within 30 months of implantation.

Finally, unable to deny that such numbers were not “statistically significant,” Medtronic recalled its defective Sprint Fidelis Leads. But thousand of people have been implanted with these leads, and now they must live with the knowledge that their Sprint Fidelis Lead could fracture at any time, placing them in mortal danger. Why the defective Sprint Fidelis lead was not removed from the market earlier, is a question that Medtronic is going to have to answer.

October 31st, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Defective Medtronic Sprint Fidelis lead fracture reports ignored by company

The leads were implanted into hundreds of thousands of patients who are now at risk of serious injury if their Sprint Fidelis Lead malfunctions. All unused leads were recalled by Medtronic on October 15, although Medtronic is actually referring to the recall as a “voluntary market suspension.” Leads that have been suspended contain the model numbers 6930, 6931, 6948 and 6949 either by themselves or at the beginning of a longer model number. Patients who have defibrillators manufactured by Guidant and St. Jude may also have the Medtronic Sprint Fidelis Lead implanted in them and should consult their physicians to discuss their options.

Sprint Fidelis Leads that have already been implanted are not being removed because surgery to remove a fractured lead wire is risky and can cause tearing or scarring of the heart tissue and veins that house the lead. There is currently no test to predict whether or not a lead will fracture and malfunction, meaning that patients have no way of knowing whether their lead could stop working in the future.

Lawsuits have been filed against Medtronic alleging the company is responsible for causing injury to defibrillator patients. A class action lawsuit was filed on October 15 in Minnesota, seeking compensatory, injunctive, equitable and declaratory relief. The plaintiffs claim that Medtronic misrepresented and concealed the safety and possible defects of its Sprint Fidelis Leads in order to protect profits. The suit also seeks relief for unjust enrichment and medical monitoring.

According to a letter from Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe of Public Citizen to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), more than 1,600 injury reports were filed over the past two years, with more than 750 reports listing “inappropriate shocks” as being received by the patient. One of the patients in the Minnesota lawsuit alleges he received 47 unnecessary shocks from his defibrillator because of the faulty wires, resulting in surgery to remove the defective lead.

The letter also notes that the Minneapolis Heart Institute contacted Medtronic in February 2007 about problems related to malfunctioning leads. An article by researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute compared lead failures in Medtronic’s Sprint Fidelis and Sprint Quattro models. The study found that the Sprint Fidelis Lead had a higher risk of fracturing than the Sprint Quattro. In fact the Heart Institute was so concerned about defective lead wires that it stopped implanting them in January 2007.

The Sprint Fidelis Lead is actually a wire that attaches the Medtronic defibrillator to a patient’s heart. It works by administering a corrective electric impulse to the heart in patients who have abnormal heart rhythms. However, the leads are prone to fracturing which can cause them to malfunction, resulting in them not delivering a shock when necessary or delivering a series of painful shocks when not necessary. Either situation can be fatal.

There is some concern that young adults and children are at a greater risk of lead fracture because the Sprint Fidelis leads are a smaller diameter than other products and were used frequently in younger patients. Patients who are more active may put additional stress on the Fidelis leads.

If you are concerned that you have been implanted with a Sprint Fidelis Lead, check your patient card that identifies which implanted devices you have. If you do not have a patient card, or are still uncertain as to what devices were used, contact your doctor for more information.

October 30th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Patients concerned about Medtronic Sprint Fidelis leads

Doctors checked the hospital’s records and discovered four similar cases had occurred in recent months. Each stemmed from a broken wire — called a lead — that tells a defibrillator when to send an electric shock to a malfunctioning heart. All six cases involved the Sprint Fidelis 6949, manufactured by Medtronic Inc., a leading medical-device maker.

Within days, the Heart Institute concluded that the Sprint Fidelis wasn’t safe enough, told the company of its concerns, and stopped using the product.

Across the country, physicians at leading hospitals from Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital to Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital came across similar problems and some took similar steps.

But it wasn’t until this month that Medtronic of Minneapolis reached the same conclusion. On Oct. 7, Medtronic President and Chief Executive Bill Hawkins convened a meeting of top executives who decided that the company should suspend sales of the Fidelis leads. In one of the biggest recalls of a medical device, it pulled all Sprint Fidelis models from the market, citing five deaths in the devices’ three years on the market.

The events surrounding the Medtronic recall expose a hole in the U.S.’s medical safety system: Medical devices are regulated under different standards from those applied to prescription drugs. The Food and Drug Administration requires that almost all new medications be tested in human trials before they go on the market. But some devices, like the Sprint Fidelis leads, are subject to lighter guidelines because they are considered modifications of earlier products. The FDA, in most cases, also doesn’t mandate major studies of medical devices after they’ve hit the market.

As a result, both the federal agency and the company were handicapped in evaluating whether a widespread public health threat was emerging.

Pieces of Information

Daniel Schultz, director of the FDA’s device center, says that over the last several months, “we had pieces of information that suggested there were certain problems associated with the Fidelis lead.” But, he says, “there was nothing we could point to specifically to say this is a violative product that needs to come off the market.”

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been critical of the FDA, is examining its handling of the Sprint Fidelis leads. The agency, meanwhile, says it is developing a new surveillance program that will help it independently monitor the safety of heart devices.

“Are there ways to identify problems more quickly?” Dr. Schultz asks. “I think the answer is yes.” But, he adds, “if you require a clinical trial for every design change, what does that do to the ability of bringing new technologies to market?”

As the Fidelis leads mystery unfolded, the FDA relied almost solely on Medtronic’s limited data. That left private cardiologists, including those at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, to ring the alarm bells, pressing both Medtronic and the FDA for action.

Throughout 2007 — and as recently as late September — Medtronic sought to reassure doctors, at times blaming the problems largely on physicians’ technique. In March, a Medtronic letter to doctors said its investigation “suggests that variables within the implant procedure may contribute significantly to these fractures.” In announcing that it was suspending sales of the Sprint Fidelis leads on Oct. 15, the company said they were failing at a rate of 2.3% over 30 months, more than twice as often as its other top lead.

Although the difference wasn’t yet statistically significant — that is, it could still have plausibly been due to chance — the safety gap between the two types of wires was widening.

Rob Clark, a Medtronic spokesman, says the company didn’t hide the problems or delay revealing them. He says Medtronic couldn’t rely on data from individual hospitals and needed time to complete its statistical analysis and confirm that there truly was an excessive fracture rate with Sprint Fidelis. “Physicians disagree on the data,” Mr. Clark says. “Some still think this device should stay on the market.”

Defibrillators are life-saving devices that dispatch shocks to treat cardiac arrest and restore normal heart rhythm. To work properly, they depend on leads, the complex wires that connect defibrillators to the heart muscle. The wires sense aberrant heart rhythms and deliver jolts of electricity to revive a dying patient.

Fractured wires can deliver unneeded and frightening shocks — and, on occasion, can cause a lethal heart rhythm. Yet thick-diameter leads have been known to pose risks. So for years, doctors clamored for ever-narrower designs, partly because blood clots tend to form around broader ones.

Medtronic answered their call with the Sprint Fidelis, among the thinnest leads, with a diameter of 2.2 millimeters — about the thickness of a nickel. In late 2004, the device gained FDA approval and it quickly became the world’s most widely used defibrillator lead.

By early this year, about 90% of new Medtronic defibrillators used Fidelis leads. Some 268,000 of the devices have been implanted in people around the world, and about 235,000 remain in patients’ chests. The leads have brought in about $1 billion in revenue for Medtronic, which has annual sales of more than $12 billion.

Like other leads made by Medtronic and its competitors, the Fidelis leads occasionally broke. But the issue went largely unnoticed until those two patients walked into the Minneapolis Heart Institute’s pacemaker and defibrillator clinic, in January.

In both cases, doctors at the clinic determined that the patients’ Fidelis leads had fractured and misfired. It worried Linda Kallinen, the clinic’s technical director. “We wondered if this was happenstance, or not,” she says. Adrian K. Almquist, the doctor who treated the patients, found the cases odd because the fractures had occurred within roughly two years of implant.

Scouring electronic logs of other clinic patients, Ms. Kallinen found reports of four other Fidelis fractures in the previous seven months. She and Dr. Almquist went to Robert G. Hauser, a senior consulting cardiologist at the Heart Institute who has made a career of studying defects in heart devices.

In 2005, Dr. Hauser, 68 years old, was instrumental in triggering the recalls of more than 200,000 defibrillators and pacemakers made by Guidant Corp., now part of Boston Scientific Corp. Eight years ago, he organized other cardiologists to create a private database of failures in defibrillators, pacemakers and leads.

After hearing from Ms. Kallinen and Dr. Almquist, Dr. Hauser combed through his multi-hospital database. He found similar trends of fractures in that database as well as multiple Sprint Fidelis lead failures in a separate federal database. The Heart Institute decided to stop implanting the Fidelis leads altogether and substitute an older Medtronic lead that appeared to be safer, the Sprint Quattro.

Dr. Hauser contacted Medtronic. In February, he and several other clinic physicians met at the Heart Institute with Warren Watson, a Medtronic vice president, and an engineer. Dr. Hauser says he told Mr. Watson that Medtronic had a serious problem with its Fidelis lead. Three identical device defects at one hospital, he argues, can signify a broader problem.

Mr. Watson disagreed that there was enough evidence yet that the Fidelis lead performed worse than others, several participants in the meeting recall. Medtronic officials also suggested that lead fractures could have resulted from doctors’ mishandling the devices, according to participants. “They were blaming the implanters,” says Dr. Almquist, who says he was offended by the suggestion.

Mr. Watson and other Medtronic officials declined to be interviewed for this story. Mr. Clark, the Medtronic spokesman, wouldn’t discuss specifics of the meeting, but said there were hospitals that had implanted hundreds of Fidelis leads with no fractures.

At the same meeting, Medtronic officials shared their own internal analysis of Fidelis leads that had been returned to the company. The data showed that from late 2004 through February of this year, there had been 226 fractures, for a 0.15% failure rate, in the Fidelis. That compared with 64 fractures, or a failure rate of 0.05%, in Medtronic’s other defibrillator lead.

The return-rate data are imperfect, however, because few leads are ever returned to the company. (Doctors often leave faulty leads in bodies and insert new ones because removing leads risks torn veins and dangerous bleeding.)

The FDA uses its discretion to determine whether a manufacturer should perform a safety or surveillance study after a device goes on the market. In the case of Sprint Fidelis leads, an agency spokeswoman said, the FDA didn’t require any such study because “no issues were raised in premarket review that suggested the need for a post-market study.” Since the Fidelis was similar to an earlier design, the FDA hadn’t required pre-marketing testing in human patients, either.

Agency officials also say that engineering bench tests can be more valuable than small human trials which might not identify relatively rare or longer-term problems.

As with all devices, Medtronic has to file reports of Fidelis problems, reported by doctors or others, to the FDA’s safety database.

Monitoring Patients Remotely

Medtronic had begun on its own a study as the leads went on the market. By March it had data on 487 patients. The month before, a team of Medtronic analysts had begun the laborious process of tapping into CareLink, a proprietary system that allows doctors to monitor patients and their defibrillators remotely by phone or computer. Using computer files on 25,000 patients fitted with Fidelis leads, the analysts set out to measure fractures and pre-fracture conditions. They also had to contact doctors and hospitals to verify that what they were assembling matched doctors’ own records.

In part due to information from Dr. Hauser, Medtronic on March 21 sent out a “dear doctor” letter saying, “Medtronic has received reports from a limited number of implanting physicians indicating they have experienced higher than expected” fracture rates. The letter cautioned doctors about how to handle the device to avoid problems.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hauser submitted a manuscript to the journal Heart Rhythm. Based on his analysis of his multihospital database as well as a federal database, Dr. Hauser concluded that “the Sprint Fidelis high-voltage lead appears to be prone to early failure.” He sent an early copy of the manuscript — whose findings would be published by Heart Rhythm online in April — to the FDA and Medtronic.

The manuscript “put Sprint Fidelis on our radar,” says the FDA’s Dr. Schultz. Still, the implications of one bad shock — even one death — in isolation were hard to discern, FDA officials say. The agency lacked details about some incidents. Given the lack of information, it couldn’t put them in context, or be sure they were all tied to a specific pattern of failure.

By this spring, doctors were reaching their own conclusions. Frank Mazzola, an electrophysiologist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., stopped using the Sprint Fidelis in April after seeing patients with lead fractures.

Multiple Shocks

Physicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital did the same after they too saw problems. At Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, cardiologist Leonard I. Ganz says he stopped using the Fidelis leads in May after two patients suffered multiple shocks. “Even though there was no statistical trend yet, I was concerned enough that it might be” in time, Dr. Ganz says.

Medtronic maintains that many hospitals using Sprint Fidelis implants weren’t experiencing any problems with fractures.

On July 19, Medtronic officials met again with Dr. Hauser and other physicians at the Heart Institute. Dr. Hauser urged Medtronic to stop selling the leads. Medtronic’s vice president for quality and regulatory issues, Reggie Groves, demurred, using a PowerPoint presentation to show that the incidence of fractures still wasn’t statistically significant, according to people present. The company declines to elaborate.

According to the Heart Institute’s Ms. Kallinen, Medtronic’s Ms. Groves said the company had identified a problem and was working on a possible remedy, but had no intention of pulling the leads off the market.

The company was trying to get to the bottom of what was becoming a crisis. Medtronic says it learned about the five deaths potentially linked to Fidelis leads between August 2006 and this September. The patient study it had begun in 2004 by late July had data on 654 patients, and the separate, eight-month CareLink analysis of 25,000 patients was well under way. Using that information, Medtronic analysts by October determined that the Fidelis overall failure rate — 2.3% over 30 months on the market — was higher than the 0.9% rate for one of its Quattro models.

Medtronic consulted its outside advisory committee of heart doctors, who thought the company had to act. Just after midnight on Oct. 15, the company issued a news release saying it was withdrawing all Sprint Fidelis leads from the world-wide market. The release quoted Mr. Hawkins as saying the recall “is the right thing to do given currently available information.”

October 29th, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Medtronic recall exposes gaps in medical safety

The risk of a defective wire is low. Medtronic said that about 2.3 percent of the estimated 235,000 patients with the defective wire, or 4,000 to 5,000 people, would experience a lead fracture within 30 months of implantation. But learning through tests that one’s defibrillator has a faulty lead can create agonizing decisions for patients and doctors.

One decision is whether to remove the wire, a procedure that carries some risks, or leave it in place alongside a replacement.

Removal carries significant risk of damage to the heart and veins through which the wire wends from the defibrillator, a generator implanted under the skin near the collarbone.

When working properly, defibrillators deliver a potentially life-saving shock if the heart beats rapidly and purposelessly in a rhythm known as ventricular fibrillation. A surge from the device can restore a life-supporting heart rhythm.

If the Medtronic lead, called the Sprint Fidelis, were faulty, it could simply signal the patient to check with a doctor about a possible malfunction. Or it could deliver a painful, body-rocking shock when such a jolt is not needed. Or the device could fail to deliver a life-saving shock when it is needed.

The malfunction does not involve conventional pacemakers without defibrillators, Medtronic said.

Dr. David R. Broudy, a cardiologist and electrophysiologist who implants defibrillators in Seattle, said Monday that he was in the habit of telling all patients about potential complications when he implants defibrillators. He said there was a 2 to 3 percent chance of complications, including serious infections and malfunctions in leads and other parts.

He says he has 92 defibrillator patients who have a Sprint Fidelis lead, although on Monday he received calls from only three of them. Like other doctors, he said he would send letters alerting patients who do not call.

Medtronic also said that it would send letters to all Sprint Fidelis patients.

Defibrillator patients generally carry cards that contain the lead’s identifying numbers, which in the Medtronic recall are 6930, 6931, 6948 and 6949. Each patient is being asked to come in for computerized testing that could detect abnormalities in resistance and other electrical functions that could signal an impending fracture in the lead.

In Seattle, Dr. Broudy said that in trying to assess what to do for each of his patients with the potentially defective lead, he would check factors like the number of times the device had appropriately delivered shocks and the degree of a patient’s anxiety.

“There are different needs for different patients,” he said. Those who have had frequent abnormal heart rhythms, he said, may be more dependent on the device than others. Even patients in whom no evidence of possible cracks in the leads is found will need to have their Medtronic defibrillators reprogrammed.

The quandary will be for those found to have a fractured lead.

Doctors can insert a new lead into the vein if there is room for it, attach it to the heart, and then put a cap on the old one.

The risks of surgically removing the lead depend in part on how long it has been in place. Scar tissue forms around the lead after it is implanted. Removal can produce bleeding from torn veins and damage heart muscle. The risk of such complications ranges from 1.4 percent to 7.3 percent.

Dr. John Kassotis, director of cardiac electrophysiology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, said, “You can definitely take the leads out if they have been in less than six months and usually if it is less than two years.”

Patients who do need surgical removal of the lead should go to doctors and medical centers that have extensive experience in performing such procedures, experts interviewed Monday said.

October 23rd, 2007

SOURCE: Sprint Fidelis Lead Recall › Heart device recall poses a quandary for patients