Johnson & Johnson announced a recall of uterine surgery tools on Wednesday, after news surfaced that the instruments could cause cancer.
The Ethicon unit of Johnson & Johnson has reached out to hospitals asking them to return a line of devices used in hysterectomies and uterine surgeries. The action followed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory in April that discouraged doctors from using morcellators, as it poses a risk in spreading cancerous tissues. Morcellators are commonly used in laparoscopic operations for fibroid removal in the uterus, a procedure that calls for the extraction of the entire uterus.
The recall will be worldwide, and is slated to include the Gynecare Morcellex, Gynecare X-Tract tissue morcellators, and the Morcellex Sigma tissue morcellator system, the New York Times reported.
Critics commended the medical device company for its quick response.
"The company has had a rather abysmal track record on the public health front of ethical breaches in the last few years, so this is good that they're doing this," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, to the New York Times.
But some surgeons are not happy with the recall. Power morcellation is less invasive than other surgical alternatives, and spreading cancerous tissues can be avoided. This procedure accounts to 16 percent of uterine surgery procedures.
"You don't even have to be a doctor to recognize that if tissue or a tumor has malignant potential, you should not mince it up inside someone's body," Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a Harvard-based cardiothoracic surgeon, told the Washington Post. "That's just bad medicine."
Speculations rose that Johnson & Johnson promptly announced the recall to avoid lawsuits and bad public relations. The company denied this allegation.
"Every situation is unique and evaluated independently of each other," said Ethicon spokesman Mathew Johnson to the New York Times.
