The Mayo Clinic's Dr. Richard Marsh helps control brain seizures in epileptic patients with a fiber-optic laser first introduced to treat prostate tumors.
At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ganesh Raveendran has figured out how to treat young stroke victims with a device designed for congenital heart defects.
It doesn't matter whether the medical devices' inventors, or the regulators who approved the products, ever considered such methods.
"It is common practice in the cardiology world," said Raveendran, director of the U's cardiac catheterization laboratory. "We expand the scope."
Doctors have complete discretion to use medical devices in any way they think helps their patients — including "off-label" uses that were never envisioned. These adaptations are expanding the use of medical devices among U.S. patients of all ages.
But the flexibility this system enables comes with risks for patients.
The same kind of experimentation that transformed a prostate product into a promising brain probe led to the flawed use of surgical mesh as a treatment for women's incontinence, injuring thousands.
"Frankly, the oversight is really quite relaxed and not accountable to the public," said Lisa McGiffert, director of the Consumers Union Safe Patient Project.