Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13649

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Boden WE, Diamond GA.
DTCA for PTCA — Crossing the Line in Consumer Health Education?
NEJM 2008 May 22; 358:(21):2197-200
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0801433

Abstract:

On November 22, 2007, viewers of the nationally televised Thanksgiving Day football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Jets witnessed the launch of the first direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) campaign for percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) with a drug-eluting coronary stent. The airing of “Life Wide Open,” the 60-second commercial for Cypher, the sirolimus-coated stent produced by the Cordis division of Johnson & Johnson, marked the dawn of a new era in medical DTCA, which has for the past decade focused on brand-name pharmaceutical agents.

To many consumers, the stent ad may not have seemed surprising or out of place – no different from television ads touting the virtues of drugs for acute coronary syndromes, arthritis, depression, prostatic enlargement, fibromyalgia, restless legs syndrome, and, of course, erectile dysfunction. But in making the leap from pharmaceuticals to medical devices, the ad campaign raises important questions regarding the net societal benefit of medical advertising directed at the lay public. Even if there is an overall benefit from the unfettered transmission of information in a free society, has industry crossed the line this time? In the ad for Cypher, a device is being promoted to millions of people who are ill-equipped to make judgments about the many clinically relevant but subtle and complex therapeutic issues that even specialists continue to debate…

Notes:

Link to download advertisement:
http://www.cypherusa.com/cypher-j2ee/cypherjsp/main_splash/video.jsp