SURGICAL PRECISION
Inside 6-Year Probe of Medical Device
06/05/06
It was a story in a Boston newspaper six years ago that piqued Nidia Gamba's interest. On her way into work as a special agent in the FBI's Boston field office, Gamba read that a local company's medical device was failing during surgical procedures and that the Food and Drug Administration was inquiring about a voluntary recall.
The
product in question was a delivery system
used to implant stents in cardiac patients.
A stent is an expandable wire mesh sheath
placed within a blood vessel to keep it
open or to clear a blockage. A catheter
carries the stent to the affected area,
and a tiny saline-filled balloon inside
is inflated to expand the mesh and clear
an opening. In this case, cardiologists
were reporting unanticipated pinhole leaks
and ruptures in the balloons, turning a
fairly routine operation into a more risky
endeavor.
Despite
reports of complications, including one
death, the company continued to ship the
devices.
"It did not make sense to me that they were not recalling a product that was causing harm," said Gamba, who before becoming an agent worked in the healthcare industry for 12 years and was a surgical sales specialist at a major pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer.
Gamba called the U.S. Attorney’s Office
in Boston, which concurred with the FDA inquiry
and began what would become a six-year investigation
involving hundreds of witness interviews
in three countries and thousands of technical
documents.
Here's how the investigation worked:
- With the FBI as the lead agency, the U.S. Attorney's Office subpoenaed company e-mails, test results, clinical trials, sales figures, lot numbers, and other information covering the time when the stent was first developed to the time the defective devices were recalled.
- Gamba and three FDA investigators waded through some 600 boxes of technical material looking for documentation that the company knowingly sold a defective product. They turned up evidence that during finished goods testing the devices failed up to 28 percent of the time-a rate that far exceeds the zero-percent guidelines issued by the FDA for Class III devices (devices that support or sustain human life). "They basically covered up and knew they were selling an adulterated product," Gamba said.
- The investigators interviewed every cardiologist who reported a problem and more than 100 employees at the company and its subsidiaries.
During
the interviews, a designer acknowledged
making the change that ultimately caused
the device failures. Meanwhile, two employees
told investigators they had urged management
to cease shipping the devices. The company
did finally stop shipments and issue a
recall after distributing more than 34,000
flawed devices during a 54-day period in
1998.
Faced
with mounting evidence, the company entered
a settlement with the U.S. Attorney's Office last June, agreeing to pay $74 million to the U.S., an amount equal to twice the sales revenue from shipments of the faulty devices.
“It was satisfying to see it all come
to fruition,” said Gamba, who worked
the case for three years before transferring
to New York in 2001 and handing the investigation
to another agent in Boston.
Resources: White-Collar
Crimes stories |
FBI
field office cases |
Boston field office
