Cardiologist is sued for comments on potential migraine device

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2412

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Clare Dyer

¹BMJ

A leading British interventional cardiologist who was a joint principal investigator in a clinical trial of a device made in the United States is being sued for libel and slander in the English courts by the manufacturer. The case concerns comments attributed to him about the trial that were posted on a US based news website for heart specialists.

NMT Medical, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts, makes the STARFlex septal repair implant. The company has launched the legal action against Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Dr Wilmshurst and a headache specialist from King’s College London, Andrew Dowson, led the Migraine Intervention with STARFlex Technology (MIST) trial in the United Kingdom to study the effect of the device on migraine (Circulation 2008;117:1397-404).

The company is suing over an article published in October 2007 by Heartwire, an online cardiology news service (www.theheart.org). Dr Wilmshurst gave an interview to a Heartwire journalist, …