By BARRY MEIER
The New York Times
BOSTON — As the use of life-saving emergency defibrillators has proliferated over the last decade, so have recalls of the devices because of their potential to fail, according to data to be presented Thursday at a medical meeting here.
A study based on Food and Drug Administration records from the last 10 years found that about 164,000 emergency defibrillators — or about one out of every five units sold during the period — had been subject to an agency recall or alert.
During that period, the F.D.A. also received 370 reports of deaths in which defibrillators or critical components malfunctioned during attempts to resuscitate patients in cardiac arrest, researchers reported. It is not clear how many of those patients might have been saved had the devices functioned properly.