Drugs & Treatments

FDA Warns About Widely Used Heart Pumps Linked to Deaths and Serious Injuries

FDA Warns About Widely Used Heart Pumps Linked to Deaths and Serious Injuries
A.C. Dahnke
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning for commonly used heart pumps that may cause damage to the heart.

The Impella pumps manufactured by Abiomed have been associated with 129 serious injuries and 49 deaths, according to the FDA.

The Role of Impella Pump

The Impella left-sided blood pump provides short-term support to assist the heart chambers in pumping blood during high-risk surgeries involving catheters. It is used in cases where a patient experiences cardiogenic shock within 48 hours of a severe heart attack, open-heart surgery, or due to cardiomyopathy.
A.C. Dahnke
A.C. Dahnke
Author
A.C. Dahnke is a freelance writer and editor residing in California. She has covered community journalism and health care news for nearly a decade, winning a California Newspaper Publishers Award for her work.