In his latest post to our firm’s Norfolk Injuryboard blog, my colleague John C. reports that tens of thousands of heart and artery imaging catheters have been recalled because a piece can break lose, stay inside a person and put the patient at risk for a fatal heart attack or stroke. John also noted that…
A new kind of hip replacement device cleared for marketing in the United States in 2003 came with the promise of better performance, longer useful life and fewer post-surgery complications than earlier models of the medical device that some 120,000 Americans have implanted each year. Those promises soon became nightmares for as many 13 percent…
Makers of the narcotic painkiller Darvon, Darvocet and generic tablets containing the opioid drug propoxyphene agreed to pull their prescription products from U.S. pharmacy shelves in November 2010. The total recall of all forms of the medication, including tablets that contained a combination of propoxyphene and acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol from McNeil Consumer Healthcare), came after…
If you or a family member takes Accutane, Amnesteem, Clavaris or Sotret to treat severe acne , you and they need to decide whether it’s safe to keep using products containing isotretinoin. Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Roche the OK to start marketing Accutane in 1982, patients and their parents have reported…
After more than half a century on the market, Darvocet (also known as propoxyphene) was taken off the U.S. market. Studies showed an increased risk of heart arrhythmias, even in patients who did not have heart issues. Some estimate that Darvocet, which is manufactured by Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals Inc., has killed over 1,000 people in the…