How would you feel if a medical device (or medication) you relied on was recalled for harming patients?

I can tell you exactly how I’d feel, because I’ve been there! I’ve had issues with two different drugs in the past. One was a painkiller I had taken twice daily for quite some time (I think it was Celebrex?) that got recalled/reclassed with a ‘black box’ warning because it was causing people to have heart attacks. That was freaky and scary. I still take a similar pain medication, with slightly less risk. It’s a balancing act, and a quality of life issue for me.

The other was an anti-seizure medication (Topamax) that I was taking to control mood swings. I’d been having a twitchy eye problem for months, which my doctor wrote off as stress (seemed reasonable at the time), when my eye started to feel swollen and like there was pressure behind it. He still didn’t know what was wrong. When I got my meds refilled, I happened to read the patient pamphlet for the Topamax again, and saw this side effect warning: Some side effects can be serious. If you experience any of the following symptoms, call your doctor immediately: eye pain.

I called my doctor’s office and left a message about this, and his nurse calls me all frantic, “Stop taking it right away, and see an eye specialist immediately.” Turns out, Topamax can cause glaucoma. (Luckily, we caught it in time, and I don’t have glaucoma.) I had been taking it for six months, dealing with the eye twitch/pain for at least 3 of those months, and no one told me! Only time I was ever angry with my doctor, and boy was I pissed. He was sincerely apologetic… it’s a rare side effect, and he was unaware of it. I hope he learned to pay closer attention to people’s medications when they’re having an unexplained problem.

That is one of the main reasons I stay away from any products that haven’t been on the market for 10 years or more.

If it was a medicine, I would be concerned and would want to find out everything I could about why it was being recalled and whether there was any risk to me.

I feel very sorry for those people who have had a hip replacement. I have seen a similar problem about a particular device and those people who are having problems with it are in a real mess. It isn’t like they can just say… oh I will stop using it… they have to have surgery and have a different type of replacement hip fitted. Poor people.

I have taken several medications that have been recalled.
I was not happy about it, but when you take a drug or have a procedure you must know that there are risks involved.
I just wish I could find a safer medication that could do the job like the three different recalled medications that I had taken did.

I would be glad that the problem has been caught. I would look with my doctor for a replacement therapy.

I’d be scared as hell!

It’s never happened to me, but last year a drug that is sometimes used to treat the condition I have, which I had briefly considered trying, got recalled because particles of glass were found in it (it’s an injection). WTF?! I was so glad I wasn’t using it!