U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to two breast implant manufacturers for failure to comply with their requirements, under their premarket approval orders, to conduct post-approval studies to assess the long-term safety and risks of their silicone gel-filled breast implants.
The FDA issued warning letters to Mentor Worldwide LLC of Irvine, California, and Sientra, Inc. of Santa Barbara, California. Every manufacturer of approved silicone gel-filled breast implants is required to conduct post-approval studies to further evaluate safety and effectiveness of the products and to answer additional scientific questions about the long-term safety and potential risks of breast implants that their premarket clinical trials were not designed to answer.
The FDA’s warning letter to Mentor Worldwide LLC (Mentor) noted several serious deficiencies in the manufacturer’s post-approval study for its MemoryShape breast implant, first approved in 2013, including that the manufacturer had failed to enroll the required number of patients in the study. The action also notes Mentor had poor follow-up rates with patients in the study. Finally, the FDA notified Mentor that there were significant data inconsistencies in the study, including poor patient accounting and missing race and ethnicity data. While the FDA had concluded after reviewing several interim study reports submitted by Mentor that progress on the post-approval study appeared adequate at that time, the agency advised Mentor of concerns about patient enrollment, follow-up rates and data inconsistencies.
Mentor’s failure to address these concerns and comply with its post-approval study requirements is a violation of the firm’s pre-market approval order.
The FDA’s warning letter to Sientra, Inc. (Sientra) noted a serious deficiency in the manufacturer’s post-approval study for its Silicone Gel Breast Implants, first approved in 2013. The manufacturer had poor follow-up rates with patients. Currently, the manufacturer reported a follow-up rate of 61 percent, which is below the target follow-up rate. In the response to the manufacturer’s most recent interim study report, the FDA notified the manufacturer that the study progress was inadequate because of low follow-up rates. Sientra’s failure to address these concerns and comply with its post-approval study requirements is a violation of the firm’s pre-market approval order.
The FDA requested responses from both manufacturers within 15 working days of the issuance of the warning letters, with details about how the noted violations will be corrected. The FDA may take action for a failure to comply with post-approval orders, including pursuing applicable criminal and civil penalties, where appropriate.
The FDA’s actions today are part of the agency’s ongoing commitment to its public health mission of ensuring patient access to safe and effective medical devices. As part of the Medical Device Safety Action Plan, the FDA committed to streamlining and modernizing how the agency implements postmarket actions to address device safety issues to make responses to risks more timely and effective, including taking actions against manufacturers when their postmarket studies are non-compliant with any study requirements.
The FDA has issued several warning letters in recent years to manufacturers who did not adequately fulfill certain postmarket study requirements, reflecting the agency’s commitment to take more aggressive actions against manufacturers who fail to comply.
Additionally, the FDA has worked with multiple stakeholders to facilitate the development of the National Breast Implant Registry (NBIR ) to provide a platform for collecting additional real world data on the safety and performance of breast implants. This newly launched registry will greatly add to the information we collect in our own post-approval studies about the long-term safety of breast implants, and potentially enhance our understanding of the long term safety and risks associated with breast implants.
