Defective Medical Products - Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators

Guidant had an idea to develop an implantable cardiac defibrillator
that captured the world by storm, but ended up in a nasty recall of 7
models of their medical product.

Guidant, who is now under the wing of Boston Scientific, took off
like a rocket when they first brought out their implantable cardiac
defibrillators. When they started to fail and the products were
recalled, the company took a nose dive in public confidence, not to
mention it became the target of widespread lawsuits for marketing
defective medical products.

Guidant began life as a small company in 1972 and was successful
enough that Eli Lilly bought them out in 1978. Their specialty was
finely crafted cardiac defibrillators, and they continued making them
without a problem until 2005 when there were 26 reported cases of their
product failing. Rumors abounded that the company had known about the
problem prior to 2005 yet did nothing about it.

2005 was a bad year for Guidant as they issued safety advisories
regarding 7 models of their defibrillators and also had to advise
doctors to discontinue using 4 of those models. The disaster knew no
bounds when another nine models were called into question in subsequent
weeks. The problem was tracked to 3 models of the Guidant
defibrillators where the insulation on the wiring shorted out.

Finding this out is one thing, doing something about it was another,
and nothing was done in terms of halting production or recalling the
defective medical products. The company actually continued to sell them
and tried to fix the short-out problem in later versions of their
product. Evidently, other problems also surfaced at the same time, but
this time included memory-programming errors. By the time these errors
were exposed, over 50,000 people had the potential to be affected by
this defective medical product.

Cardiac defibrillators are used for patients with ventricular
fibrillation and irregular heartbeats that sometimes cause the heart to
quit. Defibrillators need to be absolutely top quality to prevent
fibrillation and death.

The problem is that although there have been lawsuits filed against
Guidant; there are still patients out there with potential time bombs
implanted in their chests. While it's a patient's decision to have one
replaced, the process is risky and expensive.

If you or a loved one has one of the potentially defective Guidant
cardiac defibrillators implanted, contact a defective medical product
attorney and discuss your case.

Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M.
Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice,
motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta
personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.