Why Doesn’t the FDA Put an End to Medical Tube Mishaps?
Despite the fact that medical tubing errors occur commonly at hospitals, the FDA continues to approve tubes that are hooked up using interchangeable connectors that go into the stomach, the veins, and so on. Their reasoning behind this is because the new tubes are no more dangerous than those already on the market, so they cannot be denied. In other words, the FDA knowingly allows potentially dangerous devices to continue to infiltrate the medical market rather than requiring the safety flaws be fixed. Even the FDA has acknowledged that the system used for medical device approvals contains flaws, and they have released a preliminary assessment aimed at overhauling the system. Still, nine FDA employees have already claimed the FDA’s device approval process has so many flaws it is “illegal and dangerous,” according to the New York Times. One former FDA device reviewer, Dr. Robert Smith, left the agency in July over this very issue, telling the Times: “The FDA could fix this tubing proble
