Letter from abbott

[TIVAndy]

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Did anyone receive this letter? I quickly glanced at it but i cant decipher this in one read. I got the sense of "we ****ed up and our marketing was also wrong (with prolonged battery life) so replace those ipgs soon"

 

[Orin]

Devices have two alarms generally.

ERI is the early replacement indicator. It tells you that you should get in to talk about replacing your device as the battery will stop.
Generally at ERI, they calculate an EOS or end of service date. The above is to tell you that the device is calculating that date wrong, so it may only be half as long as you think.

This isn't that big of a deal for SCS cases as rarely do you need to replace them urgently, and the majority of SCS IPGs aren't ever replaced.

 

[TIVAndy]

Devices have two alarms generally.

ERI is the early replacement indicator. It tells you that you should get in to talk about replacing your device as the battery will stop.
Generally at ERI, they calculate an EOS or end of service date. The above is to tell you that the device is calculating that date wrong, so it may only be half as long as you think.

This isn't that big of a deal for SCS cases as rarely do you need to replace them urgently, and the majority of SCS IPGs aren't ever replaced.

I guess i'm worries about premature replacement of IPG. in the letter they did say the 2 cases affected with these issues lost therapy and had to exchange IPG to address the issue (i would think a correction of ERI programming will solve it but i guess it wasn't the case)
subjecting the patient to premature IPG exchange seems like a harm to the patient imho

 

[Orin]

I guess i'm worries about premature replacement of IPG. in the letter they did say the 2 cases affected with these issues lost therapy and had to exchange IPG to address the issue (i would think a correction of ERI programming will solve it but i guess it wasn't the case)
subjecting the patient to premature IPG exchange seems like a harm to the patient imho

It explicitly states it does not reduce estimated battery life.

I agree it is harmful to operate on patients but they often prefer 2 surgeries in 10 years to avoid recharging at all. I do find prime cell batteries to be rather optimistic in their battery life durations.

 

[MitchLevi]

Eterna is the best of both worlds.