this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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FDA says 561 deaths tied to recalled Philips sleep apnea machines::Update from the Food and Drug Agency comes days after Philips said it would stop selling the devices in the U.S.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Philips said it would stop selling the devices in the U.S.

cool. So the rest of the world can get stuffed.

[–] Plopp 13 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 57 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

It's weird they only stop selling them now, it's been at least a year in France we know it kills people. I believe there is also a trial.

Why would Phillips remove them in France but keep selling them in the usa ?

Edit: my bad, it's been 2 years we know it gives cancer.

[–] acetanilide 35 points 4 months ago (6 children)
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[–] Maggoty 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well fuck me. I've been using one of these things for nearly a decade.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Be happy, you helped make some people at Phillip richer.

In all seriousness, Phillip itself admitted the foam in their device can make headache, give toxicity and cancer. I've not been able to read the official declaration, only news report but if I was you I would check that because when the company itself admit it can give cancer, you know it's bad.

[–] Whirling_Cloudburst 47 points 4 months ago

More info is needed. Here ya go folks:

Philips recalled the following devices made between 2009 and April 26, 2021:

A-Series BiPAP A30
A-Series BiPAP A40 (ventilator)
A-Series BiPAP Hybrid A30
A-Series BiPAP V30 Auto (ventilator)
C-Series ASV (ventilator)
C-Series S/T and AVAPS
DreamStation
DreamStation ASV
DreamStation Go
DreamStation ST, AVAPS
Dorma 400
Dorma 500
E30
Garbin Plus, Aeris, LifeVent (ventilator)
OmniLab Advanced+
REMstar SE Auto
SystemOne ASV4
SystemOne (Q-Series)
Trilogy 100 (ventilator)
Trilogy 200 (ventilator)

Sauce

[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

This isnt even about the materials breaking down, every product breaks down eventually. But cars from 30 years ago have better critical air path separation than that.... how badly did they fuck up the engineering to even make it possible for housing components to get sucked into the intake?

Oh, it probably would have cost an additional $0.45 per unit to inject the housing in a different way that provides a hard barrier between the mechanicals and air intake so it got shitcanned...

[–] Hule 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe more like $0.05. But yeah..

[–] SuckMyWang 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Well either way the extra profit is worth the realized potential carnage. Oh well I guess, no one will go to jail anyway

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I'm not sure, but your comment seems to imply an assumption that the foam was designed to be external to the air path and is getting unintentionally sucked in? That's not the case, the foam is literally only inside an "air chamber" that the air directly travels through.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 months ago

Blows gas and pieces of foam into the airway. So it suffocates you when it's supposed to stop you from suffocating basically.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Philips said it would stop selling the devices in the U.S

Lol wtf bro! Just stop selling it! Fuckers will now start selling in in 3rd world countries like China, India etc.

[–] sir_reginald 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

China is not a third world country

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Oh really ? Damn i was there last year and no different that other 3rd world. Rampant poverty, shitty roads etc. Mind it , I was not living in the city , city is developed but same is the case for all 3rd world countries.

[–] jmanes 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Come to the midwest of the USA. You'll find all of that shit out here, too, if you know where to look.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The US is also a third world country just like china.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper 1 points 4 months ago

And Antarctica

[–] jmanes 1 points 4 months ago

I don’t separate countries by arbitrary terms like β€œthird world.” It’s a country and people live within it.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"Third world" just meant Africa, but picked up the "poor" connotation from those ads in the 80s with the starving african children, a "Nimrod" affect.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (7 children)

If you want to get pedantic about it, 3rd world originally meant countries that didn't take sides in the cold war. 1st world was US and western European democracies and their client states and allies, 2nd world was USSR and their client states and allies.

3rd world was Africa, India, a lot of SE Asia and some Central/South American countries.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact, Finland and Sweden were also third world countries under this definition.

[–] Tum 2 points 4 months ago

and Ireland too!

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[–] michaelmrose 4 points 4 months ago

It is sort of by definition. Third world doesn't actually mean poor or backward

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I use another brand (Resmed) and pulled my old one apart to see what's inside. They are well engineered - and they need to be, as they run 7-8 hours, every night. They also have quite a bit of soundproofing surounding the pump. Mine had spray expanding foam and the spongy seat padding type, but this is all outside the airflow. I suppose they could use foam inside the air tubes for further sound damping, but it seems a bit dumb as if any breaks off it will go straight up your nose.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The FDA's regulation or lack thereof is partially a horror show. Not just for this. But all sorts of implants and techniques get grandfathered in and lead to partially horrific results for people.

Oh I think it was Medical Devices: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) where I saw this. 4 year old.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Medical Devices: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

Don't buy their shit. They already made cancerous feeding bottles for babies, so...

[–] dylanTheDeveloper 1 points 4 months ago

They worked too well

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The Food and Drug Administration says 561 deaths have been reported in connection to recalled Philips devices to treat obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing disorders.

The grim tally comes days after Philips said it would stop selling the machines in the U.S. in a settlement with the FDA and the Justice Department expected to cost roughly $400 million, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing.

The tentative agreement, which must be approved by a U.S. court, calls for the company to keep servicing apnea machines already being used while stopping to sell new ones until specific conditions are met.

Claims for financial losses related to the purchase, lease or rent of the recalled machines can be now be lodged in the wake of a proposed class-action settlement reached in September.

Claims for financial losses related to the purchase, lease or rent of the recalled devices can be made, with eligible users entitled to:

Roughly 30 million people have sleep apnea, a disorder in which one's airways become blocked during rest, interrupting breathing, according to 2022Β dataΒ from the American Medical Association.


The original article contains 515 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] dojan 65 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Rubbish summary. My first question was "how can a device that basically forces you to breathe, kill you?"

The Dutch medical device maker has recalled millions of the breathing machines amid reports they were blowing gas and pieces of foam into the airways of those using the devices.

Polyester-based polyurethane foam used in the devices to reduce sound and vibration can break down, with black pieces of foam or invisible chemicals that can be breathed in or swallowed by the person using the device. "These issues could potentially result in serious injury and require medical intervention to prevent permanent injury," the FDA stated.

[–] NarrativeBear 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Wow, how can this have been an oversight? Let's just blow a bunch of microplastics down everyone's throats.

Does not even make sense from a business standpoint, if you kill your customers you won't have customers.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 13 points 4 months ago

Killing your customers slowly can be extremely profitable, and is preferred to not monetizing the poison at all (tobacco, alcohol, opioids, sugar, fossil fuels).

If this happened after 20 or 30 years it would be considered normal wear and tear, and well beyond the "usable life" of a product in the age of planned obsolescence.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I could just be they breakdown slowly and weren't picked up by tests.

[–] glitch1985 3 points 4 months ago

There are cpap cleaners that use Ozone which breaks down the foam faster than the manufacturer thought possible.