Receiving treatment from even the top medical professionals won't shield you from serious personal injury in New York as a result of defective medical devices.

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Our New York City medical malpractice attorneys know that defective medical devices are such a large problem, in fact, that the Government Accountability Office is urging more stringent procedures for the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees product safety and is closely involved when there is a recall of a potentially dangerous product.

In the four years between 2005 and 2009, the accountability office determined there were over 3,500 recalls of medical devices, averaging about 700 annually. Most of these defective products were cardiovascular and radiological devices, meaning they were used to treat patients with heart issues and cancer. Faulty equipment used in the care of individuals with these ailments has the potential to result in misdiagnosis, serious injury or even death.

With so much at stake when ineffective products are in widespread use, the accountability office wants the FDA to step up its oversight efforts in this arena.

The first responsibility lies with the firm selling the device. It's up to them to notify the FDA when there is a problem with the product. But the system is not full-proof.

As the accountability office pointed out, despite these recalls, incidents have been reported in which people were seriously injured or died because of continued use of defective devices that had already been recalled.

Concerns about the swiftness and effectiveness of this process have been voiced by numerous agencies and advocates.

One of the greatest problems found by the oversight agency was inconsistency on the part of the FDA. The FDA audits its own responses to recalls, but it wasn't done in all cases - about 90 percent. And in those cases, they weren't consistent in how they determined whether a recall had been effective. Different auditors used different standards.

Accountability office researchers say this is something that needs to be addressed.

Perhaps more concerning is that some defective medical devices continued to be used, despite the recall, because of FDA procedures that were either unclear or inconsistent.