Dr. Douglas Kwazneski was helping a Pittsburgh surgeon remove an appendix when something jarring happened. The surgical stapler meant to cut and seal the tissue around the appendix locked up.

Kwazneski later turned to the Food and Drug Administration’s public database that tracks medical device failures and “there was nothing,” he said. Yet when he surveyed leading surgeons on the matter, he discovered that more than two-thirds had experienced a stapler malfunction, or knew a peer who did. Such failures can have deadly consequences.

Kwazneski had no idea the FDA had quietly granted the makers of surgical staplers a special “exemption” allowing them to file reports of malfunctions in a database hidden from doctors and from public view.

“I don’t want to sound overdramatic here, but it seemed like a cover-up,” said Kwazneski, who practiced in Pasco County, Florida, from 2016 through earlier this year.

The FDA has built and expanded a vast and hidden repository of reports on device-related injuries and malfunctions, a Kaiser Health News investigation shows. Since 2016, at least 1.1 million incidents have flowed into the internal “alternative summary reporting” repository, instead of being described individually in the widely scrutinized public database known as MAUDE, which medical experts trust to identify problems that could put patients in jeopardy.

Deaths must still be reported in MAUDE. But the hidden database has included serious injury and malfunction reports for about 100 medical devices, according to the FDA, many implanted in patients or used in countless surgeries. They have included surgical staplers, balloon pumps snaked into vessels to improve circulation and mechanical breathing machines.

Exemption program

KHN pored over reams of public records for oblique references to reporting exemptions. After months of questions to the FDA, the agency confirmed the existence of reporting-exemption programs and thousands of never-before-acknowledged instances of malfunctions or harm.

Amid the blackout in information about device risks, patients have been injured, hundreds of times in some cases, lawsuits and FDA records show.

“The public has a right to know about this,” said Dr. S. Lori Brown, a former FDA official who accessed the data for her research. She said doctors relying just on the public reports – and unaware that many incidents may be omitted – can easily reach the wrong conclusion about the safety record of a particular device.

FDA spokeswoman Deborah Kotz confirmed that the “registry exemption” was created without any public notice or regulations. “Any device manufacturer can request an exemption from its reporting requirements,” she said in an email.

Agency records provided to KHN show that more than 480,000 injuries or malfunctions were reported through the alternative summary reporting program in 2017 alone.

More than a million reports of malfunctions or harm spanning about 15 years remain in a database accessible only to the FDA. But with the agency’s new transparency push, the public may find a public report and submit a Freedom of Information Act request to get information about incidents. A response

Malfunctions

The sheer number of malfunctions made surgical staplers an easy pick for the new alternative summary reporting program at its inception nearly 20 years ago, according to Larry Kessler, a former FDA official and now a University of Washington health services professor.

Doctors initially thought Mark Levering had liver cancer. So when the diagnosis came back as an abscess that needed to be surgically removed last February, it came as a relief to his wife, Doris.

That relief turned to dread the day of surgery. The procedure was supposed to last 2 hours, she said. But the surgery hit a snag when the stapler “misfired,” according to the surgeon, causing so much bleeding that the minimally invasive procedure was converted to an open procedure so the doctor could suture the vein.

Levering underwent CPR for 22 minutes. A code blue was called, a nurse testified. Levering lost 3 quarts of blood – about half the blood in his body. He was put on life support and would remain in a coma for weeks.

After Levering reopened his eyes, it was clear that the man who used to tend to stray cats and enjoy dinner out with his family was gone. Levering could no longer walk, comb his hair or recognize the letters of the alphabet.

Doris and Mark Levering have sued the doctor, hospital and surgical stapler maker, alleging that the device caused Mark’s bleeding and brain injury. The surgeon has acknowledged in sworn testimony that the stapler malfunctioned, but denied other wrongdoing. The hospital said in a legal filing that its actions were “prudent, proper” and “lawful.”

Covidien denies any defect with the stapler or that it caused Levering’s injuries. A spokesman for parent company Medtronic declined to comment further on any lawsuit but said that “we always make patient safety our top priority” and that the company complies with FDA requirements.

The company’s reports of stapler problems in the public database remain relatively low. But in 2018, with the reporting exemption gone, a spike of reports emerged for Covidien’s staples.