Widow Sues Guidant After Funeral Home Shock
By Jim McCartney, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Mar. 23–For most, a last hug and a kiss for a loved one who has died is a poignant moment.
But Kathleen Gohde’s final farewell to her husband turned into a macabre scene she will have to deal with the rest of her life.
As the widow bent toward Allan Gohde’s coffin last July, she was startled by a loud beeping coming from his chest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court.
The source of the noise was an implanted Guidant Corp. defibrillator, the same model that was linked to the death of a 21-year-old man last March. Both men died after their defibrillators failed to deliver a life-saving jolt to their hearts.
As it turns out, the beeping that Gohde heard was a signal of a device malfunction, and if it hadn’t sounded, the family might never have known why he died. The malfunction was traced to a short-circuiting flaw that Guidant did not disclose to doctors and patients until the 21-year-old’s story was about to be published in the New York Times.
“Guidant waited for three years before they told the public of this design flaw,” said Tara Sutton, an attorney with Minneapolis-based Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi representing Gohde and her family. “They continued to sell them after they knew they had a problem.”
Guidant spokeswoman Annette Ruzicka said her company does not “comment on matters of pending litigation.”
The lawsuit joins more than 200 product-liability claims — representing more than 2,500 patients — filed against Guidant in the past year. While the Indianapolis-based company has insurance to cover many of the claims, the bad publicity from a lawsuit like the Gohdes’ will continue to hurt its sales, said Jan Wald, a securities analyst with A.G. Edwards.
“St. Jude and Medtronic will keep using this against them, and it will be hard for them to recapture market share,” he said, referring to Guidant’s principal rivals in the heart device market.
All three companies have significant Twin Cities operations. Guidant’s heart devices are developed in Arden Hills.
The Gohde lawsuit cites a Guidant-sponsored independent panel’s report issued this week that criticized the company’s decision to withhold information about the device defects. Sutton said the report did not influence the timing of the lawsuit, however. Before filing the lawsuit, the Gohdes tried to settle out of court with Guidant, but could not reach an agreement, Sutton said.
Allan Gohde, 53, lived in Birchwood, Wis., with his wife, two daughters and two grandsons. In the mid-1990s, Gohde’s heart condition forced him to leave his job at Nichol’s Home Shield, a window screen maker in Rice Lake, Wis., where he had worked for 15 years.
Gohde was implanted with the Guidant defibrillator in February 2002, the same month Guidant discovered that deterioration in a wire insulator resulted in an electrical short in some Ventak Prizm DR 1861 defibrillators, according to the lawsuit. Two months later, Guidant made a manufacturing change.
On June 2, 2005, Gohde’s doctor told him that his device had been identified as “being susceptible to failure,” but that the company did not recommend replacement of the device.
On July 28, he was at home with his wife in when he suddenly collapsed. Less than an hour later, paramedics pronounced him dead.
When the device beeped, the funeral home director removed the defibrillator and sent it to Guidant’s cardiac rhythm management division headquarters in Arden Hills.
After examining the device, Guidant concluded that Gohde appeared to have ventricular defibrillation, a condition that can result in collapse and sudden cardiac arrest unless the heart is shocked back into a normal rhythm by a defibrillator.
Gohde’s device attempted to deliver just such a shock at 8:44 a.m. July 28, but “it appears the (device) became nonresponsive during this attempt,” according to an Oct. 11, 2005, letter from Guidant to Gohde’s doctor at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wis. In layman’s terms, Sutton said, the device short-circuited.
The case is similar to that of Joshua Oukrop, the 21-year-old Grand Rapids, Minn., man who died a year ago when the same defibrillator model short-circuited, Sutton said. Oukrop’s family reached an out-of-court settlement with Guidant last year.
Last May, Guidant’s decision not to warn doctors about the device flaw prompted three doctors from the Minneapolis Heart Institute to contact the New York Times. The fallout came fast and furious — a series of device recalls and warnings, investigations from dozens of state and federal agencies, and a slew of product-liability lawsuits, all widely reported by the news media.
In December, Guidant issued a letter to doctors and patients advising that a second death had occurred when a Ventak Prizm 2 defibrillator short-circuited. That patient was Allan Gohde.
Although the beeping horrified Kathleen Gohde and her family, they might never have known why he died if not for the disruption at the funeral home. She was not available for an interview Wednesday.
“Kathleen wonders how many other men and women have been buried without anyone knowing that a medical device may have contributed to their death,” Sutton said.
—–
To see more of the Pioneer Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.twincities.com.
Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.
GDT, NYT, AGE,