FDA Releases St. Jude Warning Letter

FDA Releases St. Jude Warning Letter

January 16th, 2013 // 11:58 am @ jmpickett

The FDA on Tuesday released the full text of a warning letter sent last week to St. Jude Medical. The company had previously disclosed the existence of the letter in an SEC filing but did not make clear the full extent of the FDA warning. The letter from the FDA is the latest in a series of setbacks and challenges to the company’s Durata and Riata ICD leads.

The letter makes clear that an FDA inspection last year of a California plant that manufactures the ICD leads turned up serious violations, and that the company’s response to these violations has not been adequate. In addition to numerous manufacturing, testing and documentation deficiencies, the letter states that the company failed to report within 30 days malfunctions relating to Durata leads that “would be likely to cause or contribute to a death or serious injury, if the malfunction were to recur.”

The FDA said it would no longer approve premarket approval applications of devices “reasonably related” to the violations until the violations have been corrected.

The full letter is here.