Guidant Defibrillators

Guidant Defibrillator Settlement

Medical device maker Boston Scientific recently announced that it will pay up to $240 million to settle numerous legal claims related to the recall of implantable heart defibrillators made by Guidant Corporation, which it acquired last year. The amount will cover approximately 8,550 claims. Guidant recalled more than 100,000 of the products between 2005 and 2006 because of potential malfunctions in the devices. The defect causes the defibrillator to short circuit and malfunction which can result in serious injury or death. The recall included the Prizm 2 DR, the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2, the Ventak Prizm AVT, Vitality AVT, Renewal 3 AVT and Renewal 4 AVT ICDs. The company said about 63,000 of the devices had been implanted worldwide and 38,000 in the United States.

An article in the New York Times reported that Guidant failed to inform doctors or patients for over three years about defects with one of its ICD models. Guidant knew for year that the Ventak Prizm 2 Model 1861, implanted in an estimated 24,000 patients, was defective. According to the report, the defibrillator defect came to light after the sudden death in March of a 21-year-old college student with heart disease who had the Guidant defibrillator implanted in his chest, the report said. Guidant, which is being acquired by Johnson & Johnson, acknowledged that Joshua Oukrop's defibrillator had short-circuited. Following Oukrop's death, Guidant told his doctors that it was aware of 25 other cases in which the defibrillator had been affected by the same flaw. Guidant executive, Dr. Joseph Smith, was quoted as saying the medical device maker had not seen a compelling reason to issue an alert to physicians because the unit's failure rate was very low and replacing the devices might pose greater patient risks.

Ury & Moskow LLC is currently representing patients who suffered serious injury because of the malfunction of Guidant's defective cardiac defibrillators. For more information about the proposed settlement, please visit http://www.guidantsettlement.com/.