MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Coming on the heels of the French breast implant controversy, a senior manager at Nuffield Health hospital in Germany warned the country’s doctors to avoid a second type of breast implant called Silimed.
The Silimed implants, not implicated in the French breast implant crisis, are coated in a material that may leak cancerous toxins into the bloodstream over many years.
Although the cancer risk is considered minute, a similar product was taken off the market in 1991. It was relaunched with CE Mark approval in the European Union in 2004.
There are an estimated 20,000 women in the U.K. with the implants already, the Daily Mail reported.
Overweight docs aren’t as helpful to overweight patients
More than half of physicians are overweight or obese, a Johns Hopkins study found, and overweight docs were less likely than their normal-weight counterparts to discuss losing weight with over-weight patients, Healthland reported.
Heart patient pushes for access to his own device data
Cardiac patient Hugo Campos urged device makers to make implant data available to physicians after he found that he was not able to access the data from his own implanted defibrillator, Mercury News reported.
Health law can survive without the insurance mandate, White House says
Should the individual insurance mandate be shot down, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act can live on, the Obama Administration said in a Supreme Court hearing, Law360.com reported..
Reimbursement issues a "moving target" with carotid stenting
Medicare and Medicaid coverage for treatment of carotid atherosclerosis continues to be a challenge as "the epidemiology is changing, the patient population is changing accordingly, all of the interventions continue to change, and we’ve not been keeping up in our data collection for the safety and effectiveness of these interventions as they continue to evolve," TheHeart.org reported.
