Return of the Troubled Power Morcellator?
You may have read some of our earlier posts addressing the plethora of concerns regarding the use of power morcellators. A recent news article was published that revealed that the lawsuit-plagued medical device might actually be returning to the market.
Olympus America Claims to Have a Fix
Medical device manufacturer Olympus America announced a couple months ago that they were launching a morcellator that claims to have a solution to the problem with the original surgical tool. The difference between the older device and the one developed by Olympus America is that the newer device has a bag attached to the tool. Some people might remember that the original morcellator was the focus of a litany of lawsuits because it could actually emulsify cancerous cells and spread them throughout the peritoneal cavity, seeding the area with cancer cells. Olympus America claims that their new containment bag will prevent this spread from occurring.
The FDA Remains Skeptical
While Olympus America’s product has been launched on the open market, the FDA has forced the surgical tool to carry a similar warning to prior iterations of the morcellator. The new device has been forced by the FDA to carry the warning that the device has not been proven to reduce the risk of spreading cancer. This very label should serve as a warning to women who might have surgery using a device with defective ancestry.
Medical Experts Opposed to the Return
Both a cardiac surgeon and his wife, an anesthesiologist, have denounced the return of the power morcellator to the open market. The physician duo went through a trying time in their lives when the wife had her undetected leimyosarcoma spread throughout her body after she underwent a hysterectomy using a power morcellator. Her story is similar to that of so many others and has resulted in dozens of lawsuits against numerous companies who developed the first iteration of the product. There were so many lawsuits that the cases had to consolidate in the court system. The cardiac surgeon even claimed that there was a study showing that the bag leaked a significant percentage of the time. This should give everyone potentially undergoing surgery with this device reason to pause.
Public Pressure is Necessary
The morcellator has already hit the open market before with disastrous results that led to the spread of cancer cases and an immense amount of suffering for patients and their families. Now, Olympus America has decided to bring this defective tool back to the open market where it has the potential to harm even more patients. This is unacceptable and deserves the full attention of the medical community who should fight for the safety of their patients above all else. A simple bag attached to the device is not a satisfactory fix to a tool that could potentially spread cancer throughout the body of an innocent patient.
Sacramento Uterine Cancer & Wrongful Death Attorneys
My name is Ed Smith, and I’m a Sacramento defective medical device lawyer. Anyone with concerns over the medical equipment used in their procedure should call me at (916) 921-6400 for free, friendly advice. You may also contact my office toll-free at (800) 404-5400.
As a member of the California Million Dollar Advocates Forum, I have won multiple million dollar case verdicts and settlements for my clients. This forum represents a group of some of the top trial attorneys in the country.
I encourage everyone to review my prior settlements and verdicts.
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