Financial ties between University of Wisconsin orthopedic surgeon Thomas Zdeblick, MD, and Medtronic date to 1996 and include more than $34 million in consulting and royalty payments, according to documents from a U.S. Senate investigation.
The payments to Zdeblick were the most for any individual among the $210 million paid over 14 years by Medtronic to a group of surgeons who wrote favorable medical journal articles about the company's spine surgery product, Infuse, records to be released Thursday show.
Documents from the investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance tallied payments from 1996 to 2010. Zdeblick got another $1.5 million in 2011 and 2012, according to Medtronic's web site.
Payments to individual doctors ranged from about $3 million to the $34 million paid to Zdeblick. A Kentucky corporate entity of which two of the doctors are officers got $64.8 million between 1996 and 2010.
Investigators also found that two papers Zdeblick co-authored were among 11 in which Medtronic employees, including those in the company's marketing department, were secretly involved in drafting and editing, a practice known as ghostwriting.
Both papers were published in the Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques where Zdeblick has served as editor-in-chief since 2002. That role was the subject of a 2009 Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation that found the journal frequently published favorable articles about Medtronic products under Zdeblick's watch. The story noted that Zdeblick's financial relationship with Medtronic was not disclosed by the journal.
01/11/2012 : By John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / MedPage Today.
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