Local docs blow whistle on medical device maker

Abbott Northwestern discovers it fucked up--it trusted Guidant Corp.

There's a piece about the fast, loose, and always exciting world of implantable medical devices in the New York Times today, and it features a prominent Minnesota connection. Dr. Robert G. Hauser of Abbott Northwestern Hospital gave reporter Barry Meier a copy of records that Abbott received last week from an Indiana-based pacemaker manufacturer, Guidant Corporation, which showed that the company continued to sell its inventory of pacemakers with an electrical system flaw for several months in 2002, even after it had changed the design of its new devices in April of that year. Guidant shared the data with doctors at Abbott after a 21-year-old Abbott patient with a genetic heart problem and one of the failed devices inside him died earlier this year. 

Read the Times story.