Insulin pumps, injury & death: A response from the community

On November 27th, an article came out about insulin pumps being linked to deaths and injuries. Here is a response from the diabetes community.

On November 27, 2018, the CBC published an article entitled “Insulin pumps linked to more reports of injury and death than any other medical device, records show” (posted online Nov. 27, 2018, as part of the “The Implant File” series). As a community, we recognized that this article, as part of the CBC’s investigation with Radio-Canada, The Toronto Star, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the medical-device industry, fell short of its own standards for accuracy and balance.

We felt it was important to address the article, its discrepancies, and to provide some community-driven insight into the use of insulin pumps within Canada. This type of reflection is important as the article potentially jeopardizes imminent approvals of new medical device technologies that could prove beneficial to improve health outcomes for Canadians living with Type 1 diabetes.

Several members of the diabetes community have voiced their opinions to the CBC and the Minister of Health and have provided CIM with copy from their letter. We have used sections of that letter to provide the response below. Thank you to everyone who has been making their voices heard. 

Note: CIM receives funding from some insulin pump companies and many of our community members rely on insulin pumps to care for their diabetes. As such, we may be biased towards supporting insulin pumping as a tool for diabetes management, although we have made effort for this post to remain objective. We still thought this article was important.