Thread: 252 journalists in 36 countries have worked to uncover the damage caused by faulty medical devices around the world. #ImplantFiles
We found stories of untested products on the market, and of patients not being told that devices inside them had been recalled.
UK regulators received 62,000 adverse incident reports linked to medical devices between 2015-2018. A third of them had serious repercussions. 1,004 resulted in death.
But despite reports of problems involving medical devices doubling, the number of investigations has fallen. 
The #ImplantFiles investigation suggests the opportunity to solve many problems is likely to be lost because of industry lobbying. In Europe alone, the medical technology market is estimated to be worth €110bn (£98bn) a year.
The MEP who led the EU’s move to overhaul medical device regulation said lobbying was “the blackest” they’d seen.
Implants fulfil a huge range of jobs and have improved many people’s lives. But when things go wrong the results can be catastrophic.
We’ve looked at a range of devices now known to have caused harm to patients to find out what went wrong and whether the problems could have been caught earlier. Start here for day one of the #ImplantFiles: gu.com/p/9qkta
