Monterey, CA Heart Defibrillators Failing At An Alarming Rate

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I have written many times on my blog about recent issues with medical devices not working properly.  The New York Times has now reported that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is moving to strengthen regulations on manufacturers of defibrillators.  The story pointed out the sad story of a nurse who tried to hook a defibrillator up to someone going into cardiac arrest when the device gave her the message "memory full" and proceeded to turn itself off.  The patient died.  In another case, the device displayed the message "equipment disabled" and then shut down.  This patient also died.  Although it's a good thing that defibrillators are now commonly seen in airports, restaurants and other public places (there are about 2.4 million of them in service), this is not acceptable that a device could shut down in the middle of using it.  About 400K people die each year from cardiac arrest, and none of them should because a defibrillator is failing.  It's estimated that there are a whopping 45,000 failures of defibrillators between 2005 and 2012.  Although some of this has been due to something simple like battery failure, manufacturers have recalled the devices 88 times during the same time period.  The FDA is now requiring some manufacturers to go through an expensive testing and research process.  Although these companies will complain, I don't think the 45,000 people hooked up to a defibrillator which failed will. 

Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands to Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors.