The world of medicine is constantly adapting and evolving. Each year, new drugs and devices are released to help solve common ailments and save lives. If you’re someone who could benefit from these, you might not question the dangers, but each year thousands of these products are recalled in the United States. Here are a few that might surprise you.
1. Physio-Control Defibrillators
Defibrillators are a device found in every hospital. This tool helps doctors save countless lives every day. However, in 2017, over 150 of these life-saving medical devices, made by the portable defibrillator company, Physio-Control, were recalled because, well, they were failing to save lives. Many doctors reported to the company that the devices were freezing or shutting-down mid-use, failing to deliver the necessary charge needed to be able to revive someone experiencing cardiac arrest–which was the entire purpose of the device and defective medical device attorneys have been involved to handle these cases.
This issue had the potential to lead to severe brain injuries, permanent organ damage, or even death. The company informed all of their customers to begin conducting daily function tests on the devices and to send them back to the manufacturers to be fixed if they were having any problems.
2. GE Healthcare Body Scanners
A lot of people in the United States suffer from claustrophobia–a fear of confined spaces–and this next recall is a fair reason for that. In February 2020, the FDA issued a Class 1 recall on body scanners built by GE. This was because it was discovered that the machine’s detector could potentially fall and trap or crush the patient inside of the device. GE removed nearly 700 scanners from the market following the recall.
3. Abbott Pacemakers
Over 3 million Americans rely on pacemakers to regulate their heartbeat. While these devices are so common, they are also commonly recalled. In 2021, three separate models of pacemakers were all recalled due to issues with their batteries depleting prematurely. This issue, while unfortunate, is something you would imagine might be a potential problem, unlike the reason why more than 500,000 pacemakers were recalled in 2017. This recall was on pacemakers created by the medical device brand, Abbott.
The company issued the recall on their devices after learning that they had the potential to be hacked and controlled by a third party. This cyber-security issue would allow the third party to control the tempo of the pacemakers, causing them to either speed up or slow down. As soon as the company realized there was a chance of this problem happening, they immediately recalled their pacemakers and updated them to prevent the issue. Thankfully, they fixed the cyber-security problem before anyone was able to take advantage of it and harm any of the patients with these pacemakers.
4. Medtronic Minimed Insulin Pumps
Another common medical device that Americans use is an insulin pump. Nearly 1.45 million men, women, and children in the United States suffer from Type 1 diabetes, and approximately 330,000 of these people use insulin pumps to regulate their blood glucose levels. This is why it was such a big deal when Medtronic’s insulin pumps were recalled back in 2020.
The pumps were all supposed to have a retainer ring holding the insulin cartridges that controlled how much insulin was delivered to the patient. Unfortunately, the retainer rings on many of these devices were either broken or missing, causing either too much or too little insulin to be administered to the patients. This defect led to more than 2,000 injuries and one death.
5. Tylenol
Have you ever considered why we have tamper-proof packaging on over-the-counter medications? Well, the answer has to do with the reason why Tylenol was widely recalled in 1982. In September of this year, seven Chicago residents died after taking the recommended dosage of Tylenol. Homicide investigators that the bottles of the drug had been tampered with and the medicine inside of the capsules had been replaced with the deadly poison, cyanide.
Many copycat murders followed this case, prompting Tylenol to recall its products and urge customers to throw out any recently purchased bottles of the drug. This safety issue caused the FDA to require over-the-counter drugs to be sold in tamper-proof packages and made many drug manufacturers switch from capsules of medication to other methods.
6. Thalidomide
Another recall that revolutionized the pharmaceutical world was that of the drug Thalidomide. This drug was originally marketed as a sedative but was eventually prescribed by many doctors to help pregnant women who were suffering from morning sickness. The drug was never proven to be effective, nor was it even approved to be sold in the United States, but this didn’t matter at the time. That was, until 1961, when it was discovered that the drug had caused severe birth defects in nearly half of the children that had been exposed to it. After this, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was amended to prevent similar cases from occurring.
