Medical devices and safety

Regarding Jenny Deam’s Q&A with Dr. William Cohen (“Device center will be equipped for medical inventors,” Page B5, Sunday), the excitement of his developing new medical devices for Johnson & Johnson in Houston is palpable. The unique promise I see is that the device developers will work directly with medical personnel in Houston — “one zip code” he called it. They will also be able to talk face-to-face with patients about how well the device is working for them.

I hope this will lead to safer devices produced by Johnson & Johnson. Their history is a bit spotty when it comes to working out the safety issues before a new device is FDA approved, and then goes to market. Specifically, I refer to the transvaginal mesh implants that have caused great pain for thousands of women who trusted the product. One settlement for this harm ran to $120 million earlier this year.

More recently, the company’s metal-on-metal hip implants have garnered large settlements. A $1 billion settlement was just awarded by a Dallas jury to harmed patients because the company knew the risks of hip-implant failures and did not warn doctors and patients.

We Houstonians can hope that the new medical device center will fully test devices before they are marketed. It will save patients a lot of pain and Johnson & Johnson some cash.

John T. James, founder, Patient Safety America, Houston