Recalls had already battered the heart device industry when Medtronic warned doctors that the wires connecting a patient's heart to its implantable defibrillators break too often. Medtronic told doctors to stop using the Sprint Fidelis wires after linking five deaths to breaks in them. The company said the Fidelis wires failed slightly more often than the thicker wires they were meant to replace. The problem does not affect Medtronic pacemakers.

Dr. Robert Hauser, a whistleblower in the recall of Guidant defibrillators, applauded Medtronic's decision to halt the use of Sprint Fidelis wires as "obviously the right thing to do." "I would like to have seen them take it off the market earlier," said Hauser, a senior consulting cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.