Samaritan Medical Center’s pain management center is reassuring patients that the hospital’s supply of a steroid used to treat back pain is not a part of a national recall linked to an outbreak of fungal meningitis.

According to a news release, the drug at Samaritan was not provided by the company at the focus of the recall. Since national reports of the fungal meningitis outbreak surfaced, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigated the New England Compounding Center, which has since shut down its operations.

“Our supply of methylprednisolone acetate is ordered directly from the manufacturer and not from the compounding pharmacy in question, New England Compounding Center,” said Joseph Sanzone, the hospital’s director of pharmacy.

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer