The Controversy over Guidant's Implantable Defibrillators

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Abstract
On October 4, 2001, Joshua Oukrop, a Minnesota teenager with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and a high risk of sudden death from ventricular fibrillation, received an implantable cardioverter–defibrillator (ICD). The device was a Ventak Prizm 2 DR Model 1861 manufactured by Guidant (Indianapolis). After it was implanted, Oukrop's physicians at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation checked it every three months (most recently on January 31, 2005) and found no problems.1 On March 14, 2005, Oukrop, then a 21-year-old college student, collapsed and died in a remote area of southeastern Utah during a spring-break bicycling trip with his girlfriend.1,2 An autopsy revealed . . .