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A British Columbia court has agreed to allow a class-action lawsuit to proceed and to be headed by the case of an infant born with a hole in her heart after her mother took the antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine). The mother, Faith Gibson, is suing GlaxoSmithKline Inc. (GSK), the maker of […]

Almost no one believes it’s easy to quit smoking, so when the drug Chantix hit the U.S. market in May 2006, some smokers breathed a sigh of relief they had finally found a way out from the grip of cigarettes. Chantix works by blocking the pleasant effects of nicotine on […]

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is fighting a patient lawsuit and seeking to have it dismissed on the grounds that the company did warn patients of the potential for metal erosion and the need for revision surgery. This California case was filed by plaintiff Loren Kransky in December 2010, just after […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced this week it has formed a collaboration with medical device manufacturers in order to speed up the development and approval of devices. The nonprofit group is called the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) and is made up of industry, academics as well as […]

If Johnson & Johnson is a family company, I’m not sure if it’s a family I want to belong to. The latest black eye for the once stellar and highly respected American company is the recall of 157,000 surgical staples used to treat hemorrhoids. The Wall Street Journal reports malfunctions […]

A new study reports on the likelihood of needing a second surgery after a hip replacement procedure for osteoarthritis, and the news is not good for men and younger seniors. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston analyzed data from 51,000 Medicare patients who received total hip replacements (THR) […]

Hip arthroplasty devices have been available in the U.S. for over 50 years with a variety of outcomes. An artificial hip medical device may be used to restore function of the joint, relieve pain or cure a disease or condition not responsive to a more conservative therapy. In May 2011, […]

The predictions are not good. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, a woman age 50 and over has about a 50 percent risk of suffering bone fracture. One quarter of them will be a fracture that affects the vertebrae. Healing from this type of injury also slows as one ages […]

A follow-up of patients who received hip replacement surgery by the National Joint Registry of England and Wales has researchers issuing an ominous warning – women are strongly urged to avoid the hip replacement procedure known as “resurfacing,” according to a published report in the British medical journal, The Lancet. […]

Compounding Pharmacies The controversy over the fungal meningitis outbreak that is traced to contaminated steroid injections has brought compounding pharmacies under the spotlight. This is not the first time. A compounding pharmacy mixes drugs for use by hospitals and clinics. Often they make up for a shortfall in drugs, as […]