A High Risk Device: FDA Orders Manufacturers of Surgical Mesh Intended for Transvaginal Repair to Stop Selling All Devices
The US Food and Drug Administration ordered the manufacturers of all remaining surgical mesh products indicated for the transvaginal repair of pelvic organ prolapse (POP) to stop selling and distributing their products in the US immediately. The order is the latest in a series of escalating safety actions related to protecting the health of the thousands of women each year who undergo surgery transvaginally to repair POP.
The FDA has determined that the manufacturers, Boston Scientific and Coloplast, have not demonstrated a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness for these devices, which is the premarket review standard that now applies to them since the agency reclassified them in class III (high risk) in 2016. As part of the 2016 reclassification, manufacturers were required to submit and obtain approval of premarket approval (PMA) applications, the agency's most stringent device review pathway, in order to continue marketing their devices in the US. The companies will have 10 days to submit their plan to withdraw these products from the market.
“In order for these mesh devices to stay on the market, we determined that we needed evidence that they worked better than surgery without the use of mesh to repair POP. That evidence was lacking in these premarket applications, and we couldn’t assure women that these devices were safe and effective long term,” said Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “Patient safety is our highest priority, and women must have access to safe medical devices that provide relief from symptoms and better management of their medical conditions. The FDA has committed to taking forceful new actions to enhance device safety and encourage innovations that lead to safer medical devices, so that patients have access to safe and effective medical devices and the information they need to make informed decisions about their care.”
Surgical mesh has been used by surgeons since the 1950s to repair abdominal hernias. In the 1970s, gynecologists began implanting surgical mesh for abdominal repair of POP and, in the 1990s, for the transvaginal repair of POP. In 2002, the first mesh device for transvaginal repair of POP was cleared for use as a class II moderate-risk device. About 1 in 8 women has surgery to repair POP over her lifetime, and a subset of these surgeries are completed transvaginally with the use of surgical mesh. However, the percentage of women undergoing transvaginal POP mesh procedures has decreased in recent years after the FDA began issuing warnings about the risks associated with using transvaginal mesh used for POP repair.
Two manufacturers have been marketing three surgical mesh products for transvaginal repair of POP. In reviewing the PMAs submitted by the two manufacturers, the agency determined they failed to provide an adequate assessment of the long-term safety of these devices and failed to demonstrate an acceptable long-term benefit of these devices compared to transvaginal surgical tissue repair without the use of mesh (native tissue repair). Since the FDA has not received sufficient evidence to assure that the probable benefits of these devices outweigh their probable risks, the agency has concluded that these products do not have a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness.
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