Doctors call for changes in the law to allow use of second hand cardioverter defibrillators

Eighty one adults in Mumbai, India, have been given second hand implantable cardioverter defibrillators, removed from adults in the United States, doctors from the two countries have reported.

Collaborating doctors arranged their own transport for the devices, which were taken from the US to the Holy Family Hospital in Mumbai, where they were cleaned, sterilised, and given to informed patients who were too poor to afford a new cardioverter defibrillator.

Behzad Pavri, from the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, and his colleagues report few complications—one fractured lead, and one dislodged lead—and no infections, in a …