In addition to medication mistakes, problems caused by medical devices can pose a hazard to patients' health, according to a study by the University of Utah School of Medicine, LDS Hospital and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Problematic devices include everything from faulty prosthetics to insufficient glue used in hip replacements to broken hospital beds. 

The study, published in Wednesday's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first of its kind to evaluate computer-based surveillance techniques to identify and estimate the number of patients who have bad experiences with a medical device. 

A retrospective cohort study was conducted among workers at a Colorado hospital to provide preliminary data on the effectiveness of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) against influenza-like illness (ILI). This report summarizes the results of that study, which indicated that TIV had no or low effectiveness against ILI.