Murrysville, Pa.-based Philips Respironics Inc. has had its share of troubles with its devices for respiratory use, including several CPAP machines. The FDA reported March 21 that the company’s V60 and V60 Plus respirators are now the subjects of a class I recall due to the use of an expired adhesive that could ultimately lead to a shut-down of the devices, including instances in which the shut-down would not be accompanied by an alarm.

The list of FDA warning letters in recent months has conspicuous in its absence of letters to device makers, but that trend has reversed with three warnings posted March 8, including a warning letter to Cardioquip LLC.

The U.S. FDA has issued an advisory regarding vulnerabilities identified in the Axeda line of remote access software published by PTC Inc., which may affect more than 100 products made by dozens of manufacturers. The vulnerability could allow a hacker to trigger changes in the operation of the affected devices, a massive risk to patients undergoing medical imaging and radiotherapy procedures. The FDA notice stated that the Axeda Agent and desktop server programs are the subject of a notice by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which characterizes the vulnerability as requiring only a low-complexity attack to exploit.

The Biden administration sees the $15.6 billion just provided by Congress as inadequate funding for the pandemic, particularly given the administration’s new test-to-treat initiative, and will continue to press Congress for the remaining $6.9 billion requested by the White House, said Tom Inglesby, senior advisor for the White House COVID response team, at the American Clinical Laboratory Association annual meeting.

The FDA and device makers have finally wrapped up what may be the most contentious set of negotiations in the history of the device user fee program. Despite industrial antipathy to a recurrent doubling of user fee volumes, the fifth device user fee deal will provide the FDA with as much as $1.9 billion in user fees, roughly double the fees collected under the current agreement.

Though the Ukraine war has had an impact on the availability of medical devices and diagnostics, a number of companies based in the U.S. and Europe have announced measures to ensure their products will reach the war-torn nation. Device companies are donating millions to nongovernmental organizations for humanitarian assistance, while the Advanced Medical Technology Association (Advamed) said its member companies are tracking the situation and are eager to pitch in with desperately needed supplies and medical equipment.

Medical devices and diagnostics are patent-dependent items, and companies may be able to avail themselves of extensions of their patents due to the time taken for FDA regulatory review. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced March 8 that it had granted Neovasc Medical Ltd. a one-year extension of the term of two patents for the company’s flagship Reducer device, thus giving the company one additional year of market exclusivity to obtain the FDA’s approval for the device.

The FDA continues its tight surveillance of rapid antigen tests for the COVID-19 pandemic and has issued three safety communications advising against the use of these tests thus far in the month of March. In each instance, the test is made by the manufacturer of name, but was not authorized in the U.S., making these misbranded products despite their legal use in other nations.

The U.S. FDA does not have legal authority to impose recalls on most regulated products, making the March 3 final guidance for voluntary recalls a key policy declaration for industry. The guidance recommends that recalling firms make extensive use of electronic communication to announce a recall, but the referenced FDA guidance for electronic communications was finalized in 2006 and makes no reference to social media as an electronic conduit for recall information.

Differential leg length is perhaps not the most common orthopedic problem in the medical literature, but the U.K. National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) sees a place for some sort of improvement over the standard of care.