Posted On August 4, 2017 Personal Injury
When your doctor first recommended an IVC filter to prevent blood clots, you might have felt relieved. The procedure should have protected you from life-threatening health risk. But it turns out that IVC filters, the devices doctors sometimes implant to prevent blood clots in bedridden and immobilized patients, can be just as dangerous.
Hundreds of patients have sustained serious injuries from these implants. Some have even died from the complications. Now, these patients and their families are moving forward with IVC injury lawsuits against manufacturers like Bard Peripheral Vascular and Cook Medical. You, too, deserve compensation for your injury.
Console and Associates have 25 years of experience handling personal injury claims. Over that time, we’ve worked with law firms across the country, including those that handle defective IVC filter claims. If we cannot handle a claim, our goal is to connect you with an experienced attorney who can. If you suffered as a result of a defective IVC filter, call today. We’ll ask you a few questions so that we can put you in touch with the right attorney.
You should speak with a doctor if you have experienced any of the following complications:
Any of these issues could be a sign of a potentially serious medical condition. After speaking with your doctor, speak to an attorney to learn more about your legal options.
One of the biggest mistakes that victims of an IVC filter injury can make is waiting too long to act. There are legal deadlines that, if you miss them, could prevent you from ever getting the IVC filter lawsuit settlement you deserve.
The attorneys we work with are familiar with the latest IVC filter lawsuit updates. Don’t waste anymore time – call today.
Even if you have an IVC filter in your body, you may not know precisely what it is or how it works.
Photo Credit: BozMo at the English language Wikipedia, Creative Commons license
, IVC filter, is the medical abbreviation for inferior vena cava filter. The IVC is the largest vein in the human body. Its function is to transport blood from the lower and middle body, including the legs, to the right atrium of the heart. Mayo Clinic identifies the inferior vena cava as the primary vein that connects the legs and the heart.
This filter is a type of medical device called a vascular filter. This means simply that it’s a filter used in the blood vessels. The small, cage-like, implant, as the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) describes it, is made of metal, often stainless steel or a nickel-titanium alloy.
Doctors implant IVC filters into patients, veins to prevent dangerous blood clots from traveling through your body, and potentially causing life-threatening problems.
Clotting, or clumping and solidifying, is something that your blood does naturally. It’s important because it prevents excessive bleeding. If your blood didn’t clot, then even a small papercut could cause you to bleed out, and perhaps, to die from blood loss.
But when your blood clots inside the body, it can do a great deal of damage. These semisolid clumps can travel through the veins and make their way to places within the body where they can cause serious problems.
Doctors might implant an IVC filter to treat or prevent conditions such as:
How Does an IVC Filter Work?
The metal cage of the IVC filter acts to trap a blood clot and prevent it from moving to the lungs or elsewhere within the body.
These medical devices aren’t only methods of treating or preventing blood clots. In fact, they may not be the best method, either. IVC filter effectiveness is the subject of some debate.
The FDA has ordered the collection of more data so that it can better evaluate IVC filter success rates. At the moment, however, very few studies have even compared IVC filter outcomes to the outcomes of patients who didn’t receive the implant.
Whether or not their use leads to a net benefit is not known, Medscape reported. What is becoming apparent is that these devices can pose serious health risks.
IVC filters come in different designs made by different manufacturers. It most recent safety communications, the FDA hasn’t singled out specific IVC filter names. Any such device has the potential to pose serious IVC filter risks.
Some of the IVC filter types on the market include:
Some of the IVC filter brand names that have become the targets of IVC filter class-action lawsuits include:
Bard has manufactured a number of IVC filter models, and several of which have been linked to IVC filter problems. For example, the Bard Denali filter was recalled in March 2015, according to the FDA. The company had also faced backlash for failing to recall other filter models, the G2, G2 Express and Recovery filters, when it allegedly knew of the potentially life-threatening complications the implants could cause, according to NBC News.
If your implant was included in the Bard IVC filter recall, you might have a claim. Even if your IVC filter by Bard hasn’t been the subject of a recall, it could still put your health at risk.
Cook Medical, too, has become the target of thousands of IVC filter class-action claims and individual lawsuits. In particular, problems reportedly resulting from Cook’s Celect IVC filter and G nther Tulip filter have led patients across the U.S. to move forward with claims against the medical device manufacturer. If you think that your health suffered due to one of these medical devices, you should pursue your Cook IVC filter lawsuit now, before it’s too late.
Like many patients, you may have no idea what kind of filter doctors inserted into your body. You don’t remember the brand name or model. You may not have even been conscious of discussing the different IVC filters available at the time your doctors performed the procedure.
That’s okay. Just because you’re not sure whether you have a Cook Celect IVC filter, a Bard G2 filter, or a medical device produced by a different company doesn’t mean you can’t pursue a claim.
Photo with modifications by Rashied Shote, Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons license.
No matter the brand or model, IVC filters are placed in the body in much the same way. Doctors use thin tubes called catheters to put the implants into the inferior vena cava blood vessel in the leg.
An IVC filter can help to prevent potentially deadly conditions such as a pulmonary embolism, but it’s not the right choice for every patient. When do doctors consider the benefits to outweigh the risks? And what happens when they’re wrong?
When a temporary IVC filter is not removed, you could find yourself in very real danger. The longer you have a filter in place, the more the risks increase, according to the FDA.
What risks, exactly? Patients across the U.S. have filed IVC filter lawsuits after suffering severe harm due to complications from the device. Some of the most serious IVC filter dangers include:
These and other complications affect patients in so many ways. They cause pain severe enough to impact your daily routine. Getting medical care, you need to recover from one of these events can be exorbitantly costly. Not all of the damage is reversible. You may have to live with this injury for the rest of your life. These situations can develop into medical emergencies, and they could very well be life-threatening.
When your doctor placed a filter inside your inferior vena cava, he or she intended for the device to stay there. Unfortunately, that’s not always what happens.
Sometimes an IVC filter will become dislodged from the location where it was placed. This allows it to migrate, or move around, throughout your body. A migrating IVC filter can travel through the blood vessel or may even find its way to other veins and arteries.
Of course, a migrating IVC filter isn’t going to do its job of catching blood clots and protecting you from a pulmonary embolism. However, it can also cause very serious problems. The device can get stuck elsewhere in your body, causing severe harm in the process.
To remove an IVC filter that has migrated, you may need to undergo surgery. IVC filter removal surgery can be complicated or even impossible, especially if your filter has become embedded in the wall of a blood vessel or an internal organ.
In some cases, the location to which the filter has migrated puts you at such a great risk that you need to undergo emergency surgery. Otherwise, the damage the IVC filter does could prove deadly.
Sometimes, through no fault of the patient, the cage-like metal structure of the IVC filter can break apart. This can pose a significant health risk. The broken metal struts may have sharp edges that can harm the organs and blood vessels around them.
Because these pieces are smaller than the whole medical device, they are able to migrate more easily, posing all the same dangers as a rogue intact filter. In fact, due to their small size, broken struts may even wind up in the space within your abdominal cavity called the retroperitoneum. If this happens, you’ll likely need to undergo an exploratory surgery so doctors can find out where the broken pieces of the filter went and retrieve them.
A faulty medical device that breaks apart inside your body, threatening your health, is the manufacturer’s responsibility.
What’s more dangerous than a whole or broken IVC filter migrating around through your insides? That implant was making its way to your heart or lungs.
This is called embolization, and it’s a particularly serious situation.
If an IVC filter is embedded in your heart, it’s a true medical emergency.
Due to the grave consequences, IVC filter embolization could force you to undergo emergency surgery to remove the implant. This surgery can be expensive. Recovery can be difficult. And some of the harm IVC filter embolization can do is too serious about repairing.
The medical device or its broken pieces can also perforate, or puncture, the wall of the inferior vena cava. It’s alarmingly common how widespread this problem is. Perforation occurs in 40 to 95 percent of IVC filter patients studied, according to the medical journal Seminars in Interventional Radiology.
What happens when the IVC filter perforates the wall of the vein? It depends where it goes next.
As if serious complications like device migration, fracture, embolization, and perforation weren’t enough, there are numerous other risks of long-term IVC filter use.
An IVC filter infection could cause you serious harm. The increased risk of DVT isn’t a matter you should take lightly, either. Blood clots in the deep veins of the legs occur in up to 30 percent of patients who have an IVC filter implanted, the Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Research reported. There’s also a risk of IVC occlusion, according to the FDA. That’s when the inferior vena cava vein becomes blocked, obstructing blood flow to the vein.
It’s always a good idea to see a doctor about any IVC filter complications symptoms you develop. Seeking medical help can help you avoid more severe damage and a worse prognosis.
No one should live in pain because of a malfunctioning medical device. The use of IVC filters has very real consequences to the patients who undergo this surgery. When made incorrectly, these companies are putting thousands of patients at risk of infections and other serious chronic conditions.
You won’t have to pay to speak to an attorney about your claim. If they take your case you won’t have to worry about legal fees or expenses. Every law firm within our network operates on a contingency fee model. Your lawyer won’t get a dime until they win your case.
