The prominent online pharmaceutical news publication, Pharmalot, has published an insightful overview of the GranuFlo scandal that took place over the last year at Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s leading supplier of dialysis products, a company that not only produces dialysis drugs and products for external sale, but also curates its own dialysis clinics, staffed by its own doctors, using its own products.
Two of its dialysis products, GranuFlo and Naturalyte, were found in 2010 to cause 941 cardiac arrest deaths in patients while undergoing hemodialysis procedures at FMC-owned clinics, prompting a great deal of research within the company. It was found that patients whose blood is a bit alkaline (basic) before undergoing dialysis are placed at a risk of cardiac arrest during treatment 4-6 times higher than the average patient. While this information, along with more accurate prescription recommendations, was circulated to clinics owned by Fresenius, none of the external clinics purchasing and prescribing GranuFlo and Naturalyte were informed, and thus the 125,000 patients using these products at external clinics were placed at unnecessary risk of serious adverse health effects, including death.
Though Fresenius eventually circulated an abbreviated memorandum to its customers on March 29th, 2012, relaying some of the pertinent information on the danger of GranuFlo and Naturalyte, it may have been too little, too late. If you believe this “morally indefensible” inaction by FMC has affected you or a loved one, please contact our team at (855) 452-5529 or by e-mail at Justinian@dangerousdrugs.us.