Olympus chose not to alert US doctors of infections linked to its duodenoscopes

Executives at Olympus chose not to alert its US customers to the fact that dozens of serious infections had been linked to its duodenoscopes despite the warning being issued to its European customers, a report in the Los Angeles Times, published 24 July, has said.1

Company emails filed in a Pennsylvania court as part of a patient lawsuit showed that in January 2013 an Olympus executive in the US, concerned about reports of infections in the US, asked in an email to the company’s Tokyo office whether the company …