Jolting of the Heart or a Lack of Shock Therapy When You Need IT: What to Do When Your Defibrillator Malfunctions

Hundreds of thousands of patients in the United States rely on implanted heart defibrillators to monitor their heartbeat and provide necessary shock therapy when their heartbeat becomes abnormal.

Unfortunately, far too many of these patients are coming forward saying that their defibrillator provided unnecessary shocking of the heart or, even worse, did not provide shock therapy when they needed it.

This is no small issue. Instead, unnecessary jolting of the heart or another failure related to an implanted heart defibrillator may be deadly. You can read more about this on our defibrillator implant lawsuit page.

Luckily, we have learned that the implanted defibrillators that malfunction for some patients have a name — the Riata, Riata ST and Durata — all defibrillators manufactured by St. Jude Medical, Inc.

Now here’s the bad news: most patients DO NOT know which defibrillator they have. Instead, patients simply know that they have one. But the exact brand name and manufacturer? Not so easy to figure out.

That’s why we encourage all patients who have experienced unnecessary jolting of the heart, a lack of shock therapy when they needed it or another malfunction that they believe is related to their implanted defibrillator to contact us at 866-520-2755 or contact us here as soon as you can.

The FDA has recalled the Riata defibrillators — and that’s great news for implanted defibrillator patients from now on. However, that does not do much to help the people who still have the faulty defibrillator inside of them.