Tag Archives: FDA

When Recalls Fail: Many harmful products remain in homes and stores. Why that happens, what needs to change, and how to protect yourself.

We Are Quoted,

Rachel Rabkin Peachman, Consumer Reports: October 31, 2019

Antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella are linked to contaminated chicken, sickening many and hospitalizing more than 200 people for almost a year and a half, though it was known that the plants processing the chicken had failed federal food safety standards. Why did the outbreak go on for so long before the unsafe chicken was pulled from store shelves?

A breast implant lacking premarket safety research is linked to a rare cancer, but years pass and women die before regulators acknowledge the connection and a manufacturer recalls the devices. Why did it take patient outcry before the potentially deadly implants were taken off the market?

An inclined sleeper for babies is put on the market without adequate safety testing or adherence to infant sleep guidelines. Over the next decade, as the sleeper becomes a best seller, dozens of babies die while using it. Why did it take public exposure before the manufacturer recalled the product?

In 21st century America, it’s easy to assume that the products we put on our plates, in our homes, and in our bodies are safe and effective. Many people expect that we have robust consumer protections in place—a system that vets products thoroughly before allowing them to be sold and that recalls products swiftly if they prove to be dangerous.

But product safety regulation and the recall process are part of a complicated and imperfect system that varies widely depending on the type of product, the industries involved, and the government agencies tasked with overseeing it. For instance, a recall does not get put into motion automatically when a product is known to cause harm. Recalls, if they happen at all, can take years to be initiated, often only after public protest and sometimes following injuries or deaths.

Moreover, when a recall is issued, consumers often aren’t made aware. Almost 70 percent of Americans said that they had not heard about a recall in the past five years for any product they own, according to a Consumer Reports nationally representative survey of 1,010 adults, though millions of products are recalled each year. And only 21 percent of Americans said they had heard about a recall and responded to it in that time frame. Of those, about two-thirds said the issue had to do with their car, 19 percent said it involved food, 9 percent a health product, and 9 percent a children’s product.

That disparity is not surprising, says David Friedman, CR’s vice president of advocacy and a former acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Unlike other federal agencies, NHTSA requires manufacturers to notify car owners directly about recalls. To track recalls, it helps that every car has a unique vehicle identification number and every owner has a registration. Other agencies—the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission—generally have fewer tools and requirements for recalls. In some cases, laws can actually shield agencies from accountability and protect companies from liability, Friedman says.

Even when consumers learn about a recall, they often aren’t given simple, effective ways to respond. Some entail disassembling and mailing in part of the product for a refund, or not using the product until a replacement part is mailed—a process that can take months. As a result, many recalled products remain in use, risking further injury.

How, then, can consumers ensure that the products they buy have been safety tested and have not caused problems since their release? In some cases, it’s impossible to fully know. But the examples described here provide a sense of how regulatory oversight sometimes works for—and against—consumers. Plus, we share steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

[…]

Dangerous Breast Implants

Raylene Hollrah was 33 years old in 2007 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. A year and a half later, when she was ready for reconstructive surgery, she chose a silicone-filled implant with a textured surface made by Allergan. Hollrah, from Hermann, Mo., believed a selling point of the implant was that she’d automatically be enrolled in a 10-year study “so I could help other women,” she says.

What Hollrah didn’t know is that medical devices—including breast implants, artificial joints, and pacemakers—are subject to much less rigorous premarket testing than drugs are. That’s partly because the FDA didn’t begin regulating medical devices or requiring research on their efficacy and safety until 1976, after many devices were already in use.

Silicone breast implants were introduced in the 1960s with little to no safety research, says Diana Zuckerman, Ph.D., president of the National Center for Health Research. Even after the FDA began regulating them, the agency didn’t require premarket studies until 1991—when it determined there was insufficient safety research, and soon after put a moratorium on sales.

In 2006, when the FDA did approve silicone implants, it was on the condition that manufacturers conduct post-market studies, one of which included Hollrah. But that wasn’t made clear to her early on. And as time passed, more problems emerged. In 2011, the FDA announced a link between silicone- and saline-filled implants and a form of cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL).

But Hollrah didn’t learn about breast implant associated ALCL, or BIA-ALCL, until 2013, when one of her implants swelled and she tested positive. “I removed breast cancer,” Hollrah says, “and then I put something right back in my body that gave me cancer again.”

Around the time of Hollrah’s diagnosis, Allergan dropped her from its post-approval study. In fact, Allergan lost track of many participants, in part because it was difficult to follow up with the women, who were given no real incentives to stay involved in the studies, Zuckerman says. As a result, the research was never completed. Yet the FDA did not penalize manufacturers or recall the implants.

Fortunately for Hollrah, her cancer was caught early. She had her implants removed in 2013 and is now cancer-free.

But it wasn’t until July 2019 that the FDA announced the recall of Allergan’s textured implants due to a reported worldwide total of 573 BIA-ALCL cases, 481 of them from Allergan, including 33 deaths.

When asked why it took eight years after the FDA acknowledged the risk of BIA-ALCL for the agency to request a recall, an FDA spokesperson said it took the action after learning, in the spring of 2019, of “a significant increase in known cases of BIA-ALCL.”

Though the recall is a victory for women affected by BIA-ALCL, other concerns remain. For one, “when medical devices are recalled, there’s typically not a rigorous process to reclaim the flawed products,” says Lisa McGiffert, a co-founder of the Patient Safety Action Network and a former patient-safety expert at CR.

There’s also no established system for device manufacturers to find and notify doctors and patients about a recall. Hollrah notes that she has yet to receive a recall notification from Allergan.

For its part, Allergan says that “patient safety is a priority” and that it is committed to ensuring the safe and effective use of its products.

Still, hundreds of thousands of women are estimated to have a recalled device in their bodies and no easy choices. The FDA recommends implant removal only for women with a diagnosis of BIA-ALCL. But women don’t always have obvious symptoms. “Although BIA-ALCL is treatable if caught early, no one wants to wait to see if they get cancer,” says Sara Castro, an attorney at Farr law firm in Punta Gorda, Fla., who is working with affected women.

Another hurdle: Though Allergan will pay for replacement implants in the case of a cancer diagnosis or implant defect, it doesn’t cover the surgical costs of preventive implant removal. Most insurers won’t cover it, either.

Scot Glasberg, M.D., past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and a consultant for Allergan, says that “if a woman has any concerns whatsoever, she should see a plastic surgeon who is board certified,” specializes in breast implants, and is knowledgeable about BIA-ALCL to go over her screening and testing options.

Women considering breast-implant surgery (or any medical device procedure) should ask their surgeon for an informed consent form that details what the device contains, and known risks. “This form is not mandated yet,” says Hollrah, who did not have that protection before her surgery and has since worked with Zuckerman, Glasberg, and others to develop a patient form and clearer warnings. And they have made progress on that front: On October 24, 2019, the FDA recommended that patient labeling for breast implants include a patient decision checklist, a boxed warning, an information booklet, and a patient device card. A final decision on that recommendation isn’t expected until 2020 at the earliest. 

Madris Tomes, a former program manager at the FDA who now runs Device Events—which gathers adverse event reports on medical devices—recommends researching your device. One free source is an online FDA database called MAUDE (Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience). “Two-thirds of all recalls begin as an adverse event report,” Tomes says.

[…]
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FDA calls for new warnings for breast implants

We Are Quoted,

Laurie McGinley, The Washington Post: October 23, 2019.

The Food and Drug Administration, under fire from women who say they were harmed by breast implants, proposed on Wednesday that manufacturers detail possible complications from the devices, including rare cancers, a range of other symptoms and the need for additional surgeries.

The agency recommended that manufacturers use a boxed warning — the FDA’s strictest caution — to clearly spell out the risks of implants, including that they are not lifetime devices and that the chances of complications increase over time. The warning also would list the devices’ association with a rare form of lymphoma and say some patients have reported fatigue, muscle aches and joint pain.

The agency also proposed that patients be given a checklist to guide conversations with their surgeons about the risks and benefits of implants before women put down deposits for their surgeries. The move is a response to complaints from patients who said they weren’t adequately told about potential problems before surgery.

“We have heard from many women that they are not fully informed of the risks when considering breast implants,” FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Amy Abernethy and Jeff Shuren, director of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement. The new recommendations are “designed to help inform conversations between patients and health care professionals when breast implants are being considered,” they added.

The FDA’s steps are the latest effort to deal with reports of complications involving devices that have been at the center of sometimes angry debate and legal actions for decades. The devices are used in about 400,000 surgeries in the United States every year, with 75 percent of the women involved getting implants for cosmetic reasons. Most of the rest get them as part of reconstruction after surgery for breast cancer.

Over the past few years, patients who say they were harmed by the devices have become increasingly active on social media sites that have enabled tens of thousands of patients to exchange information. The emergence of a rare cancer linked to implants in recent years also has drawn more attention to potential health problems associated with implants.

The FDA has said that 573 cases worldwide have linked the implants to a rare cancer since the agency began tracking the issue in 2011. The vast majority of those cases involved Allergan textured implants, which have been recalled. Thirty-three women have died of what’s known as breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, the agency said. At the same time, thousands of women have complained of fatigue, brain fog and other problems that collectively are called “breast implant illness.”

Nicole Daruda, an activist from Vancouver, Canada, who runs one of the most popular websites for women who have had trouble with implants, welcomed the FDA’s announcement, but said it was long overdue. “This is what needs to happen,” said Daruda, who had her implants removed after experiencing several health problems. “But I don’t think it would have without our putting intense pressure” on the agency.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Center for Health Research who has been working on implant issues for 30 years, said the FDA’s moves are “very important.” But she expressed concern they might yet be weakened, and are not legally binding because they are in the form of “guidance” to the industry. Whether the implant makers actually follow the recommendations “depends on how much pressure the FDA puts on the manufacturers,” she said.

The FDA’s steps are the latest in the agency’s stepped-up scrutiny of the devices, which included a dramatic two-day hearing in March during which many women demanded the FDA take steps to ensure patients have more information about the devices. About the same time, Zuckerman and Scot Glasberg, a past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, formed a working group that included activists to make recommendations to the FDA, including for a boxed warning and a patient checklist of possible problems.

What the FDA is proposing “is very close to what we gave them,” Glasberg said, adding that other groups also made suggestions to the agency.

More than 70,000 women also signed a petition asking the FDA to require a checklist. The FDA, in issuing its recommendations on Wednesday, asked for public comment for 60 days before finalizing the guidance.

Breast implants became available in the United States in the 1960s. Three decades later, after years of reports about ruptured devices and possible links to autoimmune diseases, the FDA called for a moratorium on their use, saying manufacturers had not proved the devices’ safety and effectiveness. The devices were available only for cancer patients who were undergoing reconstructive procedures, and even then, only as part of a clinical trial. In 2006, the agency lifted the ban, approving two new silicone implants.

In 2011, the FDA issued a safety communication saying that women with breast implants might have a small increased risk of developing the rare lymphoma. In July, the implant maker Allergan announced a worldwide recall of its Biocell textured breast implants after the FDA found a sharp increase in a rare cancer and deaths linked to the products and asked the company to withdraw them from the U.S. market.

The FDA, in its proposed guidance Wednesday, also called for new screening guidelines for possible ruptures, as well as a recommendation that manufacturers include product ingredient information in the devices’ labeling that is easy for patients to understand.

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Women Should Be Warned of Breast Implant Hazards, F.D.A. Says

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Roni Caryn Rabin, NY Times: October 23, 2019

Women considering surgery to receive breast implants should be warned of the risk of serious complications, including fatigue, joint pain and the possibility of a rare type of cancer, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday.

Agency officials are urging manufacturers to print a boxed warning on the packaging of the implants, and to provide a checklist spelling out the risks for patients considering surgery. It will be left to doctors to review those risks with women seeking breast implants.

The measures are not mandatory and are now open to public comment and industry input. But the recommendations reflect a growing acknowledgment at the agency that implants may cause more harm in women than previously known.

Several years ago, the agency linked implants to a rare form of immune system cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In July, at the request of the F.D.A., one manufacturer, Allergan, recalled textured breast implants linked to the cancer.

More recent studies have reported higher rates of autoimmune disease among women with breast implants. Advocates for women with these complications called the F.D.A.’s proposals on Monday “an important step,” but noted that the action is only a recommendation.

“What matters most is what happens next,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research in Washington, who has analyzed breast implant studies and has been advising patients.

She said surgeons should be required to go over the checklist with prospective patients before they put down a deposit.

“If breast implants can cause cancer of the immune system, doesn’t it make sense they can cause other systemic problems of the immune system?” Dr. Zuckerman asked.

Millions of women have implants, silicone sacks filled with saltwater or silicone gel that are used to enlarge the breasts for cosmetic reasons or to rebuild them after a mastectomy for breast cancer.

Breast augmentation with implants is the most popular cosmetic surgical procedure. Some 313,000 augmentations were performed in 2018, a 4 percent increase over the number in 2017. Breast reconstruction after cancer surgery accounts for another 100,000 procedures.

But thousands of women with implants have reported developing debilitating illnesses, such as severe muscle and joint pain, weakness, cognitive difficulties and fatigue — a constellation of symptoms some experts call “breast implant illness.”

Some of the ailments are forms of connective tissue disease, which includes lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other serious autoimmune conditions.

Dr. Zuckerman has found that most breast implant studies were carried out by manufacturers or plastic surgery associations and did not track long-term outcomes, or lost so many participants to follow-up that results were not meaningful.

The studies focused on well-defined illnesses, she said, ignoring debilitating symptoms that lacked specific diagnoses, and most were too small to detect rare diseases.

Earlier this year, the agency warned two implant manufacturers that they had failed to carry out adequate long-term safety studies of implants, which had been mandated as a condition of their approval.

The proposed checklist and boxed warning were developed in response to demands by patients who testified last March at an advisory panel meeting about illnesses they blamed on their implants.

Breast implants, heavy metals & autoimmune disorders: What should be in FDA warnings?

We Are Quoted,

Kris Pickel, AZ Family: October 18, 2019

As the Food and Drug Administration considers issuing stronger warnings for breast implants, there is a debate brewing over the content of those warnings.

The FDA is looking at several options.

• A checklist of possible risks. Doctors would be required to go over the checklist with patients who are considering breast implants.

• Listing the ingredients in breast implants.

• A box warning, also known as a black box warning. It’s the strongest warning the FDA issues signifying there is a risk of serious or even life-threatening adverse effects.

The FDA recently updated its website, acknowledging what has become known as breast implant illness.

“Some breast implant patients report a variety of systemic symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, which may not meet the diagnostic criteria to be categorized as a disease. Patients refer to these symptoms collectively as ‘breast implant illness (BII).’ In some cases, patients report that removal of their breast implants without replacement appears to reverse their symptoms.”

The regulatory agency is reacting to pressure from a growing movement by tens of thousands of women who believe breast implants made them sick. They describe many more symptoms than what the FDA recognized.

BII is not a new problem

Women have expressed concerns about breast implants for decades. Many women say doctors discount any connection the implants and the issues they experience, often making them feel their illness and symptoms are psychosomatic.

Nicole Daruda is one of the key figures behind the growing number of women demanding stronger warnings.

With recent attention on symptoms and illnesses potentially caused by breast implants, hundreds of women are requesting to join her Facebook group, Breast Implant Illness and Healing by Nicole, every day.

Five years after getting implants, Daruda was too sick to work.

She says at that time, there was almost no information available on a possible link between breast implants and the often-debilitating symptoms that plague some women.

“I put the words together, ‘breast implant illness,’ because I didn’t know what else to call it,” Daruda said.

n March, the FDA held public meetings on the safety of breast implants.

Women showed up from across the country, demanding stronger warnings that list the chemicals and heavy metals contained in breast implants. And they don’t just want the cautions to come from the FDA. They believe the caveats should come from breast implant manufacturers, too.

When Daruda had her implants removed, she described them as “sticky,” with silicone coming through the shell. It’s a condition known as “gel bleed.”

While the FDA acknowledges that gel bleed happens, it does not list it as a known risk or complication of breast implants.

“I lost over a decade of my life and health to breast implants,” Daruda said. “After my explant, it took me four years to recover the better part of my health. I still have permanent damage to my kidney from heavy metal.”

[…]

An estimated 35 million women have breast implants. Many of them never reported negative health effects.

Cohen Tervaert says certain factors can increase a woman’s risk of having an adverse reaction to implants. Those factors include allergies (any type from hay fever to metal allergies), an autoimmune disease, and a family history of autoimmune diseases.

Large-scale studies need to be done, according to Cohen Tervaert, but how they are done needs to change.

After his presentation to the FDA, the agency asked registries that collect data on patients and the safety and performance of breast implants to start tracking information on autoimmune diseases.

While many health professionals and implant manufacturers are quick to note that the safety of breast implants has been studied extensively, Dr. Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Center for Health Research and an expert on national health policy, says women cannot make informed decisions based on those studies.

The former senior policy advisor to the White House was vital in helping women with breast implant illness to organize and work with the FDA to secure the public meetings on breast implant safety.

“There are hundreds of studies of breast implants published in the last few decades, but almost all are so biased that they are fatally flawed,” she explained. “Almost all were paid for by the companies that make breast implants or the doctors whose salaries depend on those surgeries. The researchers asked the wrong questions and studied implants in ways that didn’t make sense. For example, they studied too few women, studied women with implants for a short period of time, and didn’t study the debilitating symptoms that women said they were experiencing. They also tended to study women with any kind of breast implants, instead of studying whether some breast implants were safer than others. And because of who was paying for the studies, even when the researchers found that implants caused medical problems, those findings were often misrepresented or completely covered up.”

When it comes to proving cause and effect between breast implants and illnesses, Cohen Tervaert believes the evidence is there.

Citing laboratory studies, he says mice prone to autoimmune diseases like lupus or arthritis developed the conditions after the implants were introduced. At the same time, mice that showed no prior sensitivity to autoimmune diseases did not develop health problems with the implants.

Another finding is that more protracted illness appears to result in more difficult recoveries.

“Proof that we have is, that if you remove the breast implant, breast implant illness can be reversible, especially if the period between implementation and explantation is very short,” Cohen Tervaert said. “You see, quite often, complete recovery of the symptoms.”

“If it’s, however, longer, than there is only partial recovery,” he continued. “And if you have developed an autoimmune disease, those autoimmune diseases can be difficult to treat until you remove the breast implants.”

A 2017 study found silicone from breast implants can migrate throughout a woman’s body — even if the implant was not ruptured — because silicone can “bleed” through the shell.

Silicone has been found not just in the tissue around the implants, but also in various organs throughout the body, including the central nervous system and brain.

Women studied had symptoms ranging from fatigue and cognitive impairment to headaches and body pain. The study found 60% to 80% of patients showed health improvements after their implants were removed.

The FDA has not decided if it will impose stricter guidelines on breast implant studies.

The agency issued warning letters to implant makers Mentor and Sientra in March, citing “low recruitment, poor data, and low follow-up rates in their required post-approval studies.”

The FDA gave the manufacturers a two-week deadline to fix the issues. Seven months later, no action has been taken against the manufacturers.

An FDA spokesperson tells CBS 5 Investigates they will not speculate on possible punitive actions.

Also in March, the FDA announced that it would hold future meetings to discusses material used in medical devices, including breast implants. They say they will focus on why some people have adverse reactions while others do not.

“The vast majority of patients implanted with medical devices have no adverse reactions,” the FDA said. “The device works and performs as expected to treat medical conditions or help patients better manage their health. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that a small number of patients may have biological responses to certain types of materials in implantable or insertable devices. For example, they develop inflammatory reactions and tissue changes, causing pain and other symptoms that may interfere with their quality of life.”

A date for the meeting has not been set.

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A Shocking Diagnosis: Breast Implants “Gave Me Cancer”

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Denise Grady, The New York Times: May 14, 2017.

Raylene Hollrah was 33, with a young daughter, when she learned she had breast cancer. She made a difficult decision, one she hoped would save her life: She had her breasts removed, underwent grueling chemotherapy and then had reconstructive surgery.

In 2013, six years after her first diagnosis, cancer struck again — not breast cancer, but a rare malignancy of the immune system — caused by the implants used to rebuild her chest. […]

Her disease — breast implant-associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma — is a mysterious cancer that has affected a tiny proportion of the more than 10 million women worldwide who have received implants.  […]

The Food and Drug Administration first reported a link between implants and the disease in 2011, and information was added to the products’ labeling […] An F.D.A. update in March that linked nine deaths to the implants has helped raise awareness. The agency had received 359 reports of implant-associated lymphoma from around the world, although the actual tally of cases is unknown because the F.D.A.’s monitoring system relies on voluntary reports from doctors or patients. The number is expected to rise as more doctors and pathologists recognize the connection between the implants and the disease. […]

As late as 2015, only about 30 percent of plastic surgeons were routinely discussing the cancer with patients, according to Dr. Mark W. Clemens II, a plastic surgeon and an expert on the disease at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. […]

Diagnosis and Treatment

Most of the cancers have developed from two to 28 years after implant surgery, with a median of eight. A vast majority occurred with textured implants. […]

Researchers estimate that in Europe and the United States, one in 30,000 women with textured implants will develop the disease. But in Australia the estimate is higher: one in 10,000 to one in 1,000. No one knows why there is such a discrepancy. […]

Symptoms of the lymphoma usually include painful swelling and fluid buildup around the implant. Sometimes there are lumps in the breast or armpit. […]

What exactly causes the disease is not known. One theory is that bacteria may cling to textured implants and form a coating called a biofilm that stirs up the immune system and causes persistent inflammation, which may eventually lead to lymphoma. The idea is medically plausible, because other types of lymphoma stem from certain chronic infections. Professional societies for plastic surgeons recommend special techniques to avoid contamination in the operating room when implants are inserted […]

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FDA Agrees with WHO, Links Breast Implants to Rare Cancer. How Worried Should Women Be?

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Rita Ruben, Forbes: March 22, 2017.

The Food and Drug Administration has received nine reports of women dying of a rare blood cancer years after getting breast implants, according to information the agency released Tuesday.

The FDA says it now agrees with the World Health Organization that such cases are linked to the breast implants and not some unfortunate coincidence. As of Feb. 1, the FDA says, it had received a total of 359 reports of breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL).

The FDA reports suggest that implants with a textured surface are more likely to be associated with the cancer than smooth implants—of the 231 reports that contained information about the implant’s surface, 203 were reported to be textured implants, while 28 were reported to be smooth. The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) analyzed 46 confirmed cases of BIA-ALCL, including three deaths, and none of the cases occurred in women with smooth implants.

BIA-ALCL on average is diagnosed about a decade after implant surgery, according to the WHO. The first reported case of a woman with breast implants developing ALCL was published in a 1997 letter to the journal Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. While that case was a woman with saline-filled implants, the FDA says the filling, be it saline (salt water) or silicone, doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, although no well-designed studies have yet been conducted to settle that issue.

BIA-ALCL is rare, but just how rare isn’t clear. As the FDA notes, it medical device reports can’t answer that question, because they don’t represent all cases, and the denominator—the total number of women who’ve received breast implants—isn’t known.

ALCL is more common in the breasts of women who’ve had implants than in those who don’t have implants, in whom the cancer almost never develops in the breast. A U.S. studypublished in January concluded that over their lifetime, 3.3 women out of every 100,000 with textured breast implants will develop BIA-ALCL. But the TGA estimates that the disease is more common, affecting 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1,000 women with breast implants (that agency says it has received no reports of BIA-ALCL in women with smooth implants).

“There is no reason to think it is less likely to develop in women in the U.S., and given the dramatic increase in diagnoses in recent years, it is clear that it was under-diagnosed and under-reported for many years,” Diana Zuckerman, a health advocate who has long questioned the safety of breast implants, told me.  Zuckerman serves as president of both the National Center for Health Research and the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Fund, nonprofits based in Washington, D.C.

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Women’s Health Advocates Question FDA About Missing Safety Data on Silicone Breast Implants

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Matthew Perrone, Associated Press: January 5, 2012.

[…] FDA concluded last summer that the silicone-gel implants are basically safe as long as women understand they come with complications. More than one in five women who get implants for breast enhancement will need to have them replaced within five years, the agency’s report concluded.

In August, an outside panel of physicians affirmed the FDA’s decision that the devices should remain available for both breast enhancement and reconstruction.

But the National Research Center for Women and Families says the FDA did not present information that showed women reported lower emotional, mental and physical well-being after implantation. Additionally, the group questions why figures presented by the FDA appear to show implant complications declining over time. The implants are known to fail over time.

“This shows problems with the data, since the complication rates are reported to be cumulative and should therefore stay the same or increase over time,” states Diana Zuckerman, the group’s president, in a letter to the head of FDA’s medical device division.

Most of the FDA’s data on the safety and effectiveness of breast implants comes from long-term studies conducted by the two U.S. manufacturers of the devices, Allergan Inc. of Irvine, Calif., and Mentor, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J.

When the FDA reviewed the initial applications for the devices in 2005, women using Allergan’s implants scored lower on nine out of 12 quality-of-life measures, including mental, social and general health. Women did report higher scores on measures of sexual attractiveness-body esteem.

Women implanted with J&J’s implants also scored worse on measures of physical and mental health. In the 11-page letter, Zuckerman questions why that information was not presented at FDA’s public meeting in August.

“Breast implants are widely advertised and promoted as a way to increase women’s self-esteem and positive feelings about themselves,” said Zuckerman, in an interview with the Associated Press. “But the implant companies’ own data, which the FDA made public in 2005 but ignored last year, shows the opposite.” […]

Breast implants are known to rupture and break down over time. But Zuckerman points out in her letter that the company data seem to defy this trend, with complication rates falling over time.

For instance, Allergan’s reported rate of swelling among patients fell from 23 percent in 2005 to 9 percent reported in 2011. Rates of scarring similarly fell from 8 percent to 4 percent.

“This again raises questions about the accuracy of reporting, and whether patients with complications were excluded from the 10-year sample,” writes Zuckerman. […]

 

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FDA: Breast Implant Safety Studies Will Continue

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 Brenda Goodman, WebMD: August 31, 2011.

After two days of testimony on what the FDA should do about troubled long-term safety studies of silicone-gel breast implants, agency officials said the studies would continue.

“The current post-approval studies will continue,” said William Maisel, MD, MPH, chief scientist in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in remarks after the meeting. “The FDA is committed to seeing them completed and making sure the follow-up rates improve.”

The safety studies in question, of nearly 100,000 women with breast implants, which the FDA said were the largest ever required of manufacturers after their devices were marketed to the public, have lost track of up to 79% of the women they enrolled just three years into planned 10-year efforts.

As a result, FDA epidemiologists testified yesterday, the studies had lost the ability to find rare complications, including connective tissue diseases, that they were designed to look for. […]

Consumer advocates, like Dana Casciotti, PhD, the public health research director at the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Fund, said annual, 27-page questionnaires women were asked to complete should be shortened and simplified.

“I’ve seen copies of these questionnaires, and they are much too long” and technical, she said.

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F.D.A. Affirms Safety of Breast Implants

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Gardener Harris, The New York Times: August 31, 2011.

WASHINGTON — After two days of discussion and testimony about silicone breast implants, a top government health official said he had heard nothing to shake his faith in the safety of the widely used implants.

The official, Dr. William Maisel, chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices, said silicone breast implants were safe. […]

Some patients and women’s groups who testified at the meeting disagreed.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a research and education group, told an expert panel that the two companies that manufacture silicone breast implants — Johnson & Johnson and Allergan — had done a poor job of studying patients who got the implants, as the F.D.A. required them to do.

“And without proper data, we still don’t know how safe or effective they are and whether there are certain patients at risk for extremely negative outcomes,” Ms. Zuckerman said. […]

There was some criticism of the 27-page research form that patients who participate in the study are required to complete and whether it could be shortened. Nearly all expressed hope that a registry could be created that would follow all breast implant patients, but such registries are expensive to maintain and complicated to create. […]

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FDA explores possible link between breast implants, cancer

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Andrew Zajac, The Los Angeles Times: January 26, 2011.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it has begun investigating the possible connection between breast implants and an increased risk of a rare form of cancer.

Though the number of women who may develop the disease is small, there is apparently no way to identify those who are likely to develop it — making it a source of potential concern to all women with the implants.

Among women who do not have implants, the cancer — anaplastic large cell lymphoma, or ALCL — develops in the breast tissue of about 3 out of 100 million women nationwide. [..]

“It raises a red flag about what other immune disease could be occurring that are not obvious,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families.

The FDA based its announcement on a review of scientific literature between 1997 and last May, which reported 34 cases of ALCL in women with breast implants, as well as other information from international regulatory agencies, scientific experts and implant manufacturers, which turned up additional cases. […]

Read the original article here.