Boston Scientific still pushes Watchman amid questions over marketing and science
A Boston Globe investigation published through STAT, by Elizabeth Koh and Liz Kowalczyk, reports that Boston Scientific continues to promote Watchman, a tiny cardiac implant, even after a string of setbacks. The medical-device company spent hundreds of millions of dollars more than a decade ago to acquire the device, then spent years in a debate at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over whether it should be approved at all. Approval eventually came, but only for a limited group of patients. Boston Scientific had already prepared a strategy aimed at a much larger market than that restricted indication. The reporting asks whether the company’s marketing of Watchman has outpaced the supporting science, and whether the push to broaden use goes beyond the evidence that justified the original, narrower clearance. STAT’s fuller account of how that campaign has unfolded sits behind its STAT+ paywall.
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