An extremely troubling investigation by 58 media organisations has discovered patients being given implants that were unsafe.
BBC Panorama has been investigating the industry with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and organisations around the world including The Guardian newspaper and the British Medical Journal.
They found implants being put into people after failing in trials or after tests only on pigs and dead bodies.
Medical devices range from hip replacements to implanted contraceptives to pacemakers.
In the UK alone, regulators received 62,000 ‘adverse incident’ reports linked to medical devices between 2015 and 2018. A third of the incidents had serious repercussions for the patient, and 1,004 resulted in death.
While medical devices improve and save lives it is clear that products have been allowed on to the market with little or no human testing.
The Royal College of Surgeons is calling for a register of all devices to be set up so doctors know if new innovations are causing harm.
As medical negligence specialists, we support calls for a drastic overhaul of the whole implants industry including greater regulation and testing transparency.