{"id":28101,"date":"2012-04-09T10:24:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T14:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=28101"},"modified":"2012-04-09T10:24:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T14:24:38","slug":"david-vs-goliath-st-jude-medical-seeks-retraction-of-heart-rhythm-journal-manuscript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/04\/09\/david-vs-goliath-st-jude-medical-seeks-retraction-of-heart-rhythm-journal-manuscript\/","title":{"rendered":"David vs. Goliath: St. Jude Medical Seeks Retraction of Heart Rhythm Journal Manuscript"},"content":{"rendered":"

CardioExchange welcomes this guest post from\u00a0Dr. Westby Fisher, an electrophysiologist practicing at\u00a0NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at\u00a0University of Chicago\u2019s Pritzker School of Medicine.\u00a0This piece originally appeared on his blog,\u00a0Dr. Wes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

St. Jude Medical, a widely-used manufacturer of implantable cardiac devices, finds they have a bit of a problem with a form of insulation that surrounds wires contained in several lines of their pacing and defibrillator leads. They decide to pull these products from the market<\/a> after substantial evidence that their leads’ reliability falls below their standards.<\/p>\n

A credible doctor, Robert G. Hauser, MD, known for his work in reviewing medical device safety issues, published a perspective piece<\/a> critical of the post-market surveillance of the Riata leads in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>. St. Jude Medical takes issue with Dr. Hauser, and publishes a rebuttal<\/a> in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dr. Hauser then submits a paper to the scientific peer-reviewed Heart Rhythm Journal<\/em> for publication. The paper reveals deaths that might be caused by St. Jude Medical’s faulty leads. The reviewers feel it is an important paper to share with their readership. The paper is published<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today we learn that St. Jude Medical is REALLY not happy with Dr. Hauser and demands<\/a> that his paper be retracted from the Heart Rhythm Journal<\/em> on the basis that they feel their competitor’s lead data reliability was misreported. The same letter fails to mention their own quality issues.<\/p>\n

They then issue a press release<\/a> to assure viral-media spread in an attempt to discredit the physician’s findings far and wide before facts can be verified. They say in their press release that they are justified in their action because Dr. Hauser failed to come to them before publishing his article:
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

St. Jude Medical was not consulted prior to the publication, nor asked to validate any of the data against its returns analyses. Since the manuscript was published, the company has spent more than 300 hours attempting to reach the same conclusions as Dr. Hauser, but can find no way of analyzing the MAUDE database that reproduces the same numbers reported in the manuscript. The company has identified duplicate reports, inconsistent categorizations and failures to include all available reports.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an electronic SMACKDOWN!<\/p>\n

Interestingly, word on the street was that a not-so-pleasant article about St. Jude’s lead issue and the problems therein was about to be published in a major newspaper, and it has – here’s the New York Times<\/em> article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Shakespeare famously said: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CardioExchange welcomes this guest post from\u00a0Dr. Westby Fisher, an electrophysiologist practicing at\u00a0NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at\u00a0University of Chicago\u2019s Pritzker School of Medicine.\u00a0This piece originally appeared on his blog,\u00a0Dr. Wes. St. Jude Medical, a widely-used manufacturer of implantable cardiac devices, finds they have a bit of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[678,975,1209],"class_list":["post-28101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electrophysiology","category-general","tag-defibrillation","tag-riata","tag-st-jude-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}