The U.S. FDA announced a class I recall of single-use neurovascular guide catheters made by Medos International Sarl SA of Neuchatel, Switzerland, because of fractures in the device’s distal catheter shaft. The FDA stated that the issue, seen in the company’s Cerebase DA line of guide sheaths, has led Medos to recommend that customers quarantine any of the affected devices, although a root cause has not yet been identified.
Life science companies and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have not always seen eye to eye on issues such as compulsory licensing, but industry might be supportive of a remark by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai about companies that are provided with anticompetitive breathing by their host governments with noticeable anticompetitive effect.
Some warning letters issued by the U.S. FDA are fairly simple matters, but that statement does not appear to apply to the Oct. 13, 2023, warning letter to Renovo Inc., of Bend, Ore. The warning letter provided a laundry list of sterilized reusable devices the agency said were not properly validated for sterilization, but the company rebutted these allegations in a vigorous defense of its reputation as a reprocessor.
The U.S. FDA posted two device warning letters in the first week of April 2024, including one each to Beckman Coulter Inc., of Brea, Calif., and Agena Bioscience Inc. of San Diego, the former of which was directed toward the Chaska, Minn., facility that manufactures the Beckman Coulter Dxl 9000 analyzer.
Makers of medical devices already have a substantial series of requirements related to cybersecurity, but those requirements may increase per a draft rule released by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is steadily making inroads into the world of health care, and San Francisco-based Eko Health Inc. has taken up the AI call with a stethoscope developed in conjunction with the Mayo Clinic that can detect low ejection fraction of the heart.
Angiodynamics Inc. said it has settled with the parent company of C.R. Bard Inc., over a series of conflicts over patents held by Bard that will cost Angiodynamics nearly $10 million just in 2024, potentially significantly more.
The U.K. Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency is in the thick of its proposed regulatory overhaul for medical technology, which the agency promises will hew closely to the regulations still in deployment in the European Union.
The U.S. FDA issued a draft guidance for premarket applications for class II bone grafting devices, a policy that would supplement a guidance issued nearly two decades ago.
The notion of using vacuum pressure on the anterior portion of the human eye as a treatment for open-angle glaucoma might be a clinical novelty, but Balance Ophthalmics Inc. is poised to change that. The company recently won a favorable outcome at a U.S. FDA advisory panel for its Fsyx negative pressure pump for ocular use, although the company is likely to have to drum up a large body of data in post-approval studies, assuming the FDA gives the Fsyx the nod.
