STUDY: NO INTENTIONAL BIAS IN MEDTRONIC BMP STUDIES (Orthopedics This Week)
Study Finds NO Intentional Medtronic BMP Bias
His national database work was nominated for “Best Clinical Paper” at NASS. Kern Singh, M.D. an orthopedic surgeon with Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush who says that he has NO involvement with Medtronic, has found no intentional bias on the part of the company or in the studies it sponsored. Dr. Singh tells OTW,
“My colleagues and I used Medicare data, as well as a hospital database registry to look at trends in BMP from 2000-2011. This work, published recently in Spine, revealed a dramatic increase in the utilization of off-label BMP in back and neck surgeries. It was clear that after the FDA warning letter of 2008 there was a downward trend in the use of BMP in the cervical spine. Due to litigation concerns we are seeing a downturn in all uses of BMP because doctors are afraid that they would be sued for using it despite its effectiveness.”
“Then we decided to look at cost. Oddly, we saw an increase in the cost of BMP to hospitals from 2002 to 2011…even though the pricing of BMP had not changed. We had assumed that it would be viewed as a commodity with time, i.e...
