Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Scrutiny Of Morcellator Tool Halts Its Use
The Wall Street Journal: A Medical Device Is Sidelined, But Too Late For One Woman
Dozens of cases have come to light this year of women whose cancers rapidly worsened after morcellation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned in April that the tools can worsen cancer. The top U.S. morcellator maker, Johnson & Johnson, halted sales in April, and many hospitals have curtailed their use. While the newfound scrutiny of the morcellator may save lives, women like Mrs. Interlichia and their families are still paying a grim price for decisions they and their doctors made not long before the alarms rang. (Levitz and Kamp, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal: Cancer-Risk Debate Didn’t Halt Surgeries
Doctors at a prominent Boston hospital continued to use a surgical tool during hysterectomies for two years after compiling data in 2011 that questioned the safety of the device and discussing its risks, said hospital officials and doctors. Brigham and Women’s Hospital curtailed use of the device, the laparoscopic power morcellator in December 2013, acknowledging it had spread a dangerous cancer in two of its patients, one in 2012 and the other in 2013. In March, the Harvard University-affiliated hospital became one of the first in the nation to stop using the tool. (Levitz, 11/23)
The Wall Street Journal: How Surgical Robots Spurred Morcellator Use
But as hundreds of thousands of U.S. women chose robotic hysterectomies for benign diagnoses, some doctors opted to use a technology the Food and Drug Administration in April warned can worsen cancer: the power morcellator. With more robots, “you have a bigger bucket of people getting morcellation, and that is why we are seeing more unwanted side effects, including disseminated cancers,” said Dr. Jason Wright, Columbia University Medical Center’s division chief of gynecologic oncology. (Levitz and Kamp, 11/21)
