Tag Archives: battery

Water entered missing Argentine sub’s snorkel, causing short circuit

People stand next to a bouquet of flowers and banners in support of the 44 crew members of the missing at sea ARA San Juan submarine, outside an Argentine naval base in Mar del Plata, Argentina November 25, 2017.

By Hugh Bronstein

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Water entered the snorkel of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, causing its battery to short-circuit before it went missing on Nov. 15, a navy spokesman said on Monday as hope dwindled among some families of the 44-member crew.

The San Juan had only a seven-day oxygen supply when it lost contact, and a sudden noise was detected that the navy says could have been the implosion of the vessel. Ships with rescue equipment from countries including the United States and Russia were nonetheless rushing to join the search.

Before its disappearance, the submarine had been ordered back to its Mar del Plata base after it reported water had entered the vessel through its snorkel, causing a battery short circuit, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference.

“They had to isolate the battery and continue to sail underwater toward Mar del Plata, using another battery,” Balbi said.

After contact with the San Juan was lost, the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts, detected a noise the navy said could have been the submarine’s implosion.

The search for the 65-meter (213-foot) diesel-electric submarine is concentrated in an area some 430 km (267 miles) off Argentina’s southern coast. The effort includes ships and planes manned by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries, including Brazil, Chile and Great Britain.

Among the crew’s family members, fissures started appearing on Monday between those who refuse to give up hope and those who say it is time to accept that their loved ones will not come back alive.

Some relatives have said they are focusing on the lack of physical evidence of an implosion and the possibility that the submarine might have risen close enough to the ocean surface to replenish its oxygen supply after it went missing.

But Itati Leguizamon said she believed her husband, crew member German Suarez, had died.

“There is no way they are alive,” she told reporters, her voice shaking and eyes welling with tears. “It is not that I want this. I love him. I adore him. He left his mother and sister behind, but there is no sense in being stubborn.

“The other families are attacking me for what I am saying,” she said, “but why have they not found it yet? Why don’t they tell us the truth?”

 

(Additional reporting by Eliana Raszewski; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

 

St. Jude warns of heart device battery issue linked to two deaths

The ticker and trading information for St. Jude Medical is displayed where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S

By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – St. Jude Medical Inc warned on Tuesday that some of its implanted heart devices were at risk of premature battery depletion, a condition it said had been linked to two deaths.

News of the issue surfaced late on Monday when short-selling firm Muddy Waters tweeted a copy of a physician advisory on the matter from St. Jude, which agreed in April to sell itself for $25 billion to Abbott Laboratories.

The letter said problems with the lithium batteries that power the devices were rare and could be identified by patients using tools for monitoring battery levels at home.

Patients should seek immediate medical attention as soon as they get a low-battery alert from the monitoring devices, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said, adding that St. Jude Medical had initiated a recall of the defibrillators.

St. Jude’s shares were down 2.4 percent at $79.35 in premarket trading on Tuesday, while Abbott’s were down 1.7 percent at $42.75. A spokesman for the drugmaker said it still expected to close the St. Jude deal by the end of the year.

The advisory comes as St. Jude is defending itself against unrelated allegations that its heart devices are riddled with defects that make them vulnerable to fatal cyber hacks.

Those claims were made by Muddy Waters and research firm MedSec Holdings. St. Jude has denied the allegations and sued both firms.

The FDA said on Tuesday its investigation into the cyber security vulnerabilities of the devices, including the Merlin@Home monitoring system, was continuing.

“Despite the allegations, at this time, the FDA strongly recommends that the Merlin@Home device be used to monitor the battery for these affected devices because the benefits of continued patient monitoring and the life-saving therapy these devices provide greatly outweighs any potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” the FDA said in a statement.

SMALL RISK

St. Jude said that out of nearly 400,000 devices manufactured through May last year, it had identified 841 failed implanted cardioverter defibrillators with lithium clusters, which can form after a device delivers electricity to the heart.

Lithium clusters sometimes cause battery power to deplete quickly, rendering devices unable to deliver doses of electricity when needed, St. Jude’s vice president of quality control, Jeff Fecho, said in a physician advisory.

“There have been two deaths that have been associated with the loss of defibrillation therapy as a result of premature battery depletion,” Fecho wrote in the letter.

Cowen & Co analysts said in a note that while such letters were never a positive, they were common in the industry and there was little risk to St. Jude’s business.

St. Jude advised physicians to replace devices with damaged batteries immediately, but cautioned against swapping out devices that were operating normally because of the potential for complications.

“While this risk is very small, we have provided doctors with information so that they can discuss the most appropriate course of action for each individual patient,” St. Jude’s chief medical officer, Mark Carlson, said in a statement.

St. Jude advised patients to check its website for details on which devices were affected. (http://www.sjm.com/batteryadvisory).

The site tells patients how they can monitor battery activity, look for vibrating alerts when batteries are low and connect to the Merlin.net remote monitoring service.

Battery-depletion advisories have issued in the past by Boston Scientific Corp and Medtronic Plc .

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Ankur Banerjee and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Paul Tait and Ted Kerr)