The House Committee on Energy & Commerce has stepped into a key role in the controversy over power morcellation.
At a hearing earlier this week, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations questioned whether Johnson & Johnson and Brigham & Women’s Hospital violated federal law by not reporting adverse outcomes resulting from power morcellation.
At the Nov. 17 hearing by the Subcommittee on Health, Murphy quizzed Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in an apparent effort to determine whether manufacturers of power morcellators as well as hospitals that used these devices had failed to notify FDA that patients were being harmed.
“Are you aware of this problem?” Murphy asked Shuren. “[Johnson & Johnson] was apparently aware of the dangers of this device as early as 2006, based upon a report from Dr. [Robert] Lamparter, a pathologist from central Pennsylvania, who cited about one out of 300 samples of morcellated tissue from his hospital had evidence of a hidden cancer, which is morcellated.”
At the hearing, Murphy pressed FDA’s Shuren on how much the agency knew about these incidents.
“Let me ask another question: Brigham & Women’s Hospital was aware of the dangers in 2012,” Murphy said. “A patient by the name of Mrs. Erica Kaitz was seriously injured in 2012 by the device and then died in 2013, according to reports.
“I wonder, do you know if the hospital reported that to the FDA? Would you know?”
Shuren: “I’m not aware of that.”
Contacted by The Cancer Letter after the hearing, Brigham declined to comment. The J&J subsidiary Ethicon said the company wasn’t aware of any reportable adverse events prior to December 2013.
“Dr. Lamparter did contact the company in 2006 seeking advice on ways to collect and evaluate endometrial specimens following morcellation,” an Ethicon spokesperson acknowledged to The Cancer Letter.
However, the company spokesman said the communication didn’t constitute a reportable event. “Because Dr. Lamparter did not report an actual experience with a patient, his communication was handled as a complaint, and was not reportable as an MDR,” the spokesman said.
A story about Lamparter’s report to J&J appears here.
In an earlier statement to The Cancer Letter, FDA said it received no reports of adverse outcomes before December 2013. Since then, the agency was informed of about two dozen cases of upstaging of cancer via power morcellation at a variety of health care institutions.
FDA’s answers to questions from The Cancer Letter are posted here.
The congressional hearing this week was part of a string of investigations of the controversy stemming from widespread use of power morcellators, gynecological devices now known to spread undetected cancers during hysterectomies and myomectomies.
The questions also stem from correspondence between FDA and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who is not a member of Energy & Commerce. Fitzpatrick became involved in response to advocacy by his constituents Amy Reed and Hooman Noorchashm (The Cancer Letter, Nov. 13).
Reed’s uterine sarcoma was upstaged as a result of a power morcellation surgery performed at Brigham.
“Under section 519 of the [Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic] Act (see also 21 CFR part 803), manufacturers must report to FDA information that suggests that a device they market may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury,” the agency said in a Nov. 12 letter to Fitzpatrick. “Moreover, user facilities must report device-related serious injuries to the manufacturer and device-related deaths to the manufacturer and FDA.
“FDA has taken enforcement action in the past against user facilities and manufacturers who fail to comply with FDA’s reporting requirements. We have generally focused our enforcement resources on manufacturers—who are required under law to investigate any MDR-reportable complaint they receive—and not on user facilities. We have found that encouraging more reporting—and more complete reporting—by user facilities is a good use of our limited resources in this area,” FDA wrote in response to Fitzpatrick’s questions.
Fitzpatrick’s letter and the agency’s response are posted here.
“You will note that it is an incomplete response,” a spokesperson for Rep. Fitzpatrick said to The Cancer Letter. “We will be sending out a full release when we get a complete response.”
Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly looking into the issue, and the Government Accountability Office is investigating the controversy at the behest of 12 members of Congress (The Cancer Letter, May 29, Sept. 11).
In November 2014, The Cancer Letter first reported on Brigham’s role in upstaging Erica Kaitz’s leiomyosarcoma via power morcellation. Kaitz died on Dec. 7, 2013, nearly two months after Reed received her cancer diagnosis at Brigham (The Cancer Letter, Nov. 26, 2014).
Her widower Richard Kaitz, a Boston real estate lawyer, said that Brigham doctors mischaracterized the risk his wife was facing when she underwent power morcellation.
“They gave us numbers—one out of 10,000—that they knew to be wrong,” Kaitz said to The Cancer Letter last year. “The Seidman, Muto article was published in November 2012. It says right in that article that multiple parties at Brigham said that the number they are quoting for the risk are nine times lower than the real risk.”
A transcript of the exchange between Murphy and Shuren follows:
Rep. Tim Murphy: Doctors, doctors, good to have you here. I appreciate this. I want to pivot a little here to talk about and piece together postmarket and premarket analysis and to look at this. In particular, a couple of devices used in women’s health care.
One is called a morcellator. Are you familiar with the morcellator? A device that is supposed to shred tumors etc. but has been associated with complications in women in terms of actually spreading cancer for them. It’s been on the market for 20-plus years, and FDA admitted for the first time it became aware of the safety issue with power morcellators after December 2013—correspondence from a physician citing a case of a family member.
This is someone who just recently had another surgery to remove another recurrence of cancer that was spread by the morcellator. The manufacturer [Johnson & Johnson] was apparently aware of the dangers of this device as early as 2006, based upon a report from Dr. [Robert] Lamparter, a pathologist from central Pennsylvania, who cited about one out of 300 samples of morcellated tissue from his hospital had evidence of a hidden cancer, which is morcellated.
My question is, did the FDA have any evidence of these dangers in 2006 or prior to that? Are you aware of this problem?
Jeffrey Shuren: In the past, the thought was that the risk—what risk of cancer there may be for a fibroma, for a fibroid—was significantly less, and one of the things that we looked into more recently, we came to a different conclusion that the likelihood of cancer is higher.
There’s still disagreement in the community, because, as you know, the [gynecology] health care professional societies disagree. They think we have overestimated the risk of the cancer, we said we have a different perspective, and that’s why we went out and we put contraindications and warnings on the use of that device, that it should only be used in a more limited set—or offered as an option—of women, and think about primarily women who, in the absence of using the device, would no longer be able to bear children, but want to bear children, and we felt in those cases the risk of a cancer is very low. They share the opportunity to weigh in, but we scaled back dramatically how that should be used.
So there’s a case where the science available at the premarket analysis has changed, and once being used in the data, you have a mechanism to go forward on this and make some changes.
Let me ask another question: Brigham & Women’s Hospital was aware of the dangers in 2012. A patient by the name of Mrs. Erica Kaitz was seriously injured in 2012 by the device and then died in 2013, according to reports.
I wonder, do you know if the hospital reported that to the FDA? Would you know?
JS: I’m not aware of that.
Is there a mechanism where the hospital is supposed to report that, or the manufacturer is supposed to report that so you can do an analysis?
JS: So, user facilities have certain requirements for reporting, so do manufacturers, if they become aware of certain events. And what I can tell you is we’ve been looking into those concerns that have been raised regarding reporting.
OK. In a response to Congressional inquiries about this, the FDA admitted that the one out of 350 risk does not address other types of malignancies, which, you would add to that risk, you said. They went on to say the FDA also identified studies showing that morcellated patients had worse outcomes than patients who had not undergone morcellation.
So, this is more than just the issue with just a fibroid or if it’s cancerous. It is also a question of outcomes. Is this something that the FDA is reviewing, also with regard to their stamp of approval on these things, in terms of the outcome measures?
JS: So in terms of the tests we’ve looked at, we think where we have constrained it right now, is for use—is where the benefits outweigh the risks, but we are continuing to look at new data as it arises, and if so, we will act accordingly.
Thank you. There is another issue in women’s health as brought to my attention. It’s a product called Essure. It’s a permanent birth control device that went through FDA’s rigorous premarket approval process.
Yet, despite getting the agency’s approval, it’s been linked to at least four deaths and deaths of five unborn children. Apparently, a total of 24,000 women have come forward, claiming that they have been harmed by this device.
And so the question is, how it remains on the market with potential for problems, and because this has the FDA stamp of approval, these women feel disappointed—they cannot take their cases forward, and feel they don’t have any recourse.
Is the FDA also reviewing this issue as well?
JS: In fact, we held an advisory committee meeting a few weeks ago at our behest to give an opportunity to put what new evidence is on the table to assure that people who wanted to raise concerns about it had an opportunity to provide those concerns.
And we are now currently reviewing the feedback received from the advisory committee, as well as what we have heard from other people as well as the state of the evidence, and we will come out with our conclusions on that to the public.
Thank you. And as this goes through, since this hearing is a lot about premarket analysis, what this comes down to is, I just want to make sure that we are aware of what mechanism you have, because I understand the science of 1996 is different from the science of 2015 and our knowledge base, but to have an ongoing mechanism for review and changes of devices and getting information there and looking at those things.
I’m glad you had some hearings on this, but I’d certainly like to know that that’s part of the system. I’m out of time, but I look forward to hearing your comments on that in the future. Thank you.
