The Consumer Products Safety Commission is warning against the use of Mobility Transfer Systems adult portable bed rails, which are tied to the deaths of three people. Two of those deaths occurred in long-term care settings.
The warning applies to 10 models of the bed rails, which can create an entrapment hazard between bed and rail or within portions of the bed rails themselves. Users risk serious injury or death by asphyxiation, CPSC cautioned in an advisory published late last week.
The bed rails were sold by Mobility Transfer Systems Inc. from 1992 to 2021, and by Metal Tubing USA Inc. in 2021 and 2022.
“Neither company has agreed to recall the bed rails and to offer a remedy to consumers,” according to the CPSC. The agency said it is assessing “possible future action” in the matter.
Two of the bed-rail deaths involved elderly long-term care residents, one in a Michigan assisted living facility and another in an Oklahoma nursing home. The most recent death, of a 90-year-old disabled woman, occurred in 2013. The setting for the latter death was not noted.
Entrapment in bed rails has long been a subject of concern in long-term care settings. Between 1985 and 2009, 803 incidents involving nursing home residents “caught, trapped, entangled or strangled in beds with rails” were reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Most patients were frail and elderly, the agency noted.
CPSC encouraged an immediate stop to the use of these products and asked users to disassemble and dispose of them. Incidents associated with bed rails may be reported to CPSC at www.SaferProducts.gov.
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