MPO’s Most-Read Stories This Week—March 16

Legal issues—personal or professional—tend to generate significant public interest.

Such was the case this past week on MPO’s website, as cybervisitors overwhelmingly gravitated toward news of former Stimwave CEO/Founder Laura Perryman’s guilty verdict. A jury convicted Perryman on March 6 of committing healthcare fraud for her role in creating and marketing an implantable neurostimulation device that contained a non-functioning component. Physicians expressed concern about Stimwave’s StimQ peripheral nerve stimulation device soon after it was released to market in 2017. The product is designed to treat chronic pain by providing electrical currents to peripheral nerves; however, a receiver component in the device did not fit in certain patients. As a result, Stimwave produced a dummy receiver component that had no conductivity, according to the U.S. Justice Department. 

Legal troubles also landed Medtronic in the top five most-read stories of the week. The medtech behemoth’s Jan. 22 recall of its Duet external drainage and monitoring system (EDMS) catheter tubing has been deemed Class I by the FDA. The system is comprised of a green-striped tube, stopcocks, a drip chamber, a pressure scale, needleless injection/CSF sampling sites, and a removable bag with measurements and an air vent. It works by gravity, flowing CSF from an external lumbar catheter though the tube, into the drip chamber, and into the bag. Medtronic recalled the Duet EDMS catheter tubing over the risk of disconnection from the patient line stopcock connectors, an occurrence that could possibly trigger infections, cerebrospinal fluid leakage,CSF over drainage, and ventricle abnormality. Uncontrolled CSF over drainage can lead to neurological injury or death if the disconnection is not detected.

Other pageview wellsprings came from the Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative (HIRC) and Caldera Medical. The former attracted magazine loyalists by touting a rise in support among healthcare providers in adopting the HIRC Resiliency Badge, while the latter made cyberwaves for its national group purchasing agreement with Premiere Inc.

1. Former Medical Device Company CEO Convicted of Selling Fake Components

2. HIRC’s New Resiliency Badge is Adopted by Healthcare Suppliers

3. Medtronic Has a Class I Catheter Tubing Recall

4. Caldera Medical Awarded Contract Agreement With Premiere Inc.

5. Japan’s Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Market to Reach $820M in 2033