Doctors perform bias studies for profit

Doctors are known to perform studies for companies. When they publish these articles in journals, the doctors are required to disclose their financial payments known as financial conflict of interests. Unfortunately, journals do not check or enforce these disclosure. It’s based on a good faith system.

Doctors also perform studies for their own companies. Lazarus was a device to assist in removing clots from arteries during stroke. The Lazarus device is suppose to cover the stent retriever. Stent retrievers grab the clot for retrieval. The Lazarus device is like a sock which covers the stent retriever to ensure clot is removed. However, the Lazarus device doesn’t work properly. Doctors perform a bias study where they demonstrated that the Lazarus device works better than Solitaire alone.

In their December 2014 study published in JNIS, doctors study in lab models demonstrated that the Lazarus device has a 91% rate of good clot retrieval versus 45% with the Solitaire stent retriever alone, or double the rate.  However, human studies near the same time with the Solitaire stent retriever had over 88% good recanalization.  Removing clot from lab models are much easier than real humans because of the complexity of human anatomy and real clots.  Medtronic bought the Lazarus company with a serial entrepreneur, Martin Dieck for $100 million. In less than 3 years, Medtronic shelved Lazarus because the device did not work properly. There were over 20 doctor investors who pocketed millions. In tit for tat, these doctors used Medtronic devices with over 400% increase in sales at Cornell New York Hospital where one of the inventor of the Lazarus device worked.

Many of these doctors are repeating this same modus operandi on promote another device, Zoom aspiration catheters. There are many aspiration catheters to remove clots in arteries during acute stroke. Imperative makes Zoom aspiration catheters with a beveled tip. These doctors promoted these bevel tip aspiration catheters as better than the usual flat tip aspiration catheters. They state the bevel tip increase the cross section area. However, the cross section area of the catheter is the same just beyond the tip. In fact, Penumbra which brought the aspiration catheters to the market in 2008 had studied bevel tip catheters in 2014. They found the bevel tip worse than flat tip aspiration catheters. The bevel tip would get caught up in curves with branches like the ophthalmic artery most of the time.

However, these doctors perform studies that demonstrated that Zoom aspiration catheters were able to aspirate clots better and faster than flat time aspiration catheters.