Information Disclosure, Medical Device Regulation, and Device Safety: The Case of Cook Celect IVC Filters.

Abstract

Although medical devices are widely used in clinical practice, clinicians and the public have limited access to information on how devices are tested, regulated, and used, posing challenges to patient safety. This article uses Cook Medical's Celect inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, a medical device used for prevention of pulmonary embolism, as a case study of the transparency gap in medical device regulation. Recently unsealed court documents from litigation related to Celect reveal that the devi