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Thursday, June 23, 2011

ABC news Health: Senate Launches Investigation of Medtronic Spine Fusion Device

A U.S. Senate committee has launched an investigation into reports that doctors with financial ties to the medical device company Medtronic were aware of potentially serious complications with a spine surgery product made by the company yet failed to reveal those problems in published journal articles.
Over the last year, an ongoing series of Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigations has raised questions about annual payments made to a core of prominent surgeons around the country who were involved either in the clinical testing of Infuse or co-authoring positive medical journal articles that failed to link the product to serious complications.
"We are extremely troubled by press reports suggesting that doctors conducting clinical trials examining the safety and effectiveness of Infuse on behalf of Medtronic were aware that Infuse, a treatment commonly used in spinal surgery, may cause medical complications, but failed to report this in the medical literature," Baucus and Grassley wrote. "This issue is compounded by the fact that some clinical investigators have substantial financial ties to Medtronic."

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