Power morcellation: Questions linger for controversial tech

Dr. Amy Reed’s tragic case brought to light the cancer risks posed by power morcellation. Her death hasn’t stopped lingering questions about the technology. Power morcellators were used for 20 years to laparoscopically remove fibroids, benign tumors of the uterus, raising not a single adverse event report with the FDA. That all changed in 2013, when Dr. Amy Reed, an attending physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, underwent a myomectomy using power morcellation at nearby Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Reed’s fibroids were not benign, but instead a malignant form of cancer called uterine sarcoma that’s difficult to distinguish from benign tumors. Days after her procedure, Reed’s formerly treatable condition had been upstaged to a deadly cancer. It turned out that power morcellation, a laparoscopic procedure in which surgeons use the device to mince the tumors, can seed malignant cells throughout the abdomen, drastically accelerating the cancer’s advance. Reed died last year at 44 of complications from her 2013 myomectomy, but not before she and her husband, Dr. Hooman Noorchasm, mounted a successful public health campaign to raise awareness of the risks posed by power morcellation. In 2014 the federal safety watchdog issued a black box warning for power morcellators, prompting Johnson & Johnson to pull its power morcellator from the market. With the devices gone, a void emerged in the market – women who would have undergone ...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Gynecological Legal News News Well Recalls Regulatory/Compliance Surgical Cancer eximissurgical johnsonandjohnson powermorcellators Source Type: news