Olympus, one of the companies that produces scopes tied to recent superbug infections in the U.S., sent warnings to hospitals in Europe about the risk of infection posed by the scopes two years ago, but did not warn hospitals in the U.S., according to the L.A. Times.
In fact, Olympus only issued warnings in the U.S. after news broke of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae infections at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles in February of this year. However, the device company issued its European alerts in January 2013 and August 2014.
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The European alerts recommended a specific brush to clean the duodenoscopes with. According to the L.A. Times, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration knew about the warnings but did not take action to alert U.S. hospitals. Olympus did not issue a safety notice with new cleaning instructions in the U.S. until March of this year.
"With every passing week, more information is coming out showing that the manufacturer and regulators had a lot of information about risks of superbug outbreaks from these scopes, and nothing much happened until press stories started coming out," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles) told the L.A. Times. "It's clear Olympus knew that something was not correct about its existing cleaning instructions."