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Announced in the Boston Business Journal this week, the number of lawsuits against Boston Scientific Corporation, one of six transvaginal mesh manufacturers, has been increasing.
This growth, which includes 1,600 lawsuits filed against Boston Scientific in May and June 2013 alone, is assumed to be as a result of the approaching two-year statute of limitations date. If you can recall, the FDA issued a warning on July 13, 2011, an update to a statement the organization made in 2008. In most states, a two-year statute of limitations exists for patients first learning about the dangers associated with or sensing pain as the result of a product.
Since the 2011 FDA warning, which stated, “it is not clear that transvaginal POP repair with mesh is more effective than traditional non-mesh repair in all patients with POP and it may expose patients to greater risk,” Boston Scientific has faced 6,300 total lawsuits.
For all six manufacturers, roughly 16,000 cases have been filed. Since 2011, all filed in federal courts have been consolidated for the discovery phase into multi-district litigation in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of West Virginia.
At the end of June, one of the manufacturer’s parent companies, Endo Pharmaceuticals, agreed to settle for $54.5 million. The manufacturer, American Medical Systems, Inc., has 7,700 pending lawsuits, and there’s no word how many cases the settlement resolves.
Transvaginal mesh, also called a bladder sling or pelvic sling, entered the market in the 1990s as a treatment for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Recipients of the medical device have since experienced long-term pain or underwent dangerous revision surgeries. About 10 percent of all such surgeries for either POP or SUI in which a patient received transvaginal mesh were found to result in failure, with a recent study, published on May 15, 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirming these figures.
Trantolo & Trantolo, as well, has been taking on product liability cases regarding transvaginal mesh. If you were a recipient of this medical device and are now experiencing pain, bring your claim to our attorneys’ attention.
