Personal Injury Law

FDA recalling defibrillators

The Chicago product liability attorneys at Levin & Perconti want all of our readers to be on the lookout for dangerous recalled defibrillators. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently recalled two brands of automatic and semiautomatic defibrillators due to fault components. Defibrillation is the definitive treatment for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation, and tachycardia. What defibrillation does is deliver a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a defibrillator. It depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be reestablished by the body?s natural pacemaker.

The FDA has issued a product recall for Nihon Kohden and GE Responder models of automatic and semiautomatic defibrillators due to faulty components. This follows November?s FDA product recall of Powerheart and CardioVive external defibrillators because the models had defective parts, which may have led to them not working properly. As mentioned above, defibrillators are used only in cases of emergency so the thought of them not working properly is extremely scary.

About 280,000 defibrillators are used worldwide according to the FDA and the recalled models may not work during attempts to rescue people in sudden cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is responsible for more than 300,000 deaths yearly. The recalled defibrillators are dangerous because they may fail to properly deliver a shock and have been found to have faulty parts that may cause them to fail at delivering that lifesaving shock. The recalled devices may also fail in reading and analyzing the heart rhythm. Recalled defibrillators should be repaired or replaced. However, the FDA says the recalled defibrillators should be used unless another defibrillator is available, explaining that the potential benefits of using the available external defibrillators outweigh the risk of not using any of the affected external defibrillators or the risk of device failure.

To read the entire CNN article on the recalled defibrillators, click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog on April 29, 2010 (boomark / email).