Injury, death & big profits: NBC News reveals alarming Bard blood clot filter details, Arentz Law Group reports

PHOENIX - Sept. 4, 2015 - PRLog -- A yearlong NBC News Investigation airing in two parts this week exposed dark details about medical company giant C.R. Bard and its “Recovery” model inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, a device implanted in thousands of Americans that is intended to catch blood clots in a patient’s main artery.

According to part one of the report that aired Thursday on NBC Nightly News, C.R. Bard continued to sell 34,000 Recovery filters for three years despite mounting reports of death and injury linked to the IVC filter.  Instead of removing the reportedly dangerous device from the market, the company instead simply modified the Recovery filter and gave it a new name; the new model was labeled the G2 filter.

The investigation revealed that 27 deaths and 300 injuries have been linked to the Bard Recovery Filter.  The second part of the investigation explores the seemingly underhanded methods used by Bard to attain FDA approval for its Recovery filter.

There are at least 22 Bard IVC Filter cases currently being heard in federal court, though the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) states they are aware of 16 additional, related cases pending in 13 different U.S. District Courts.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety warning in 2010 regarding IVC filters in general, citing the more than 900 adverse event reports filed with the agency in five years’ time.  The FDA followed the warning with a 2014 communication to the medical community suggesting that doctors remove the IVC filter from their patient once the need for the filter has passed.

The FDA states that doctors were not originally aware of the urgency of removing the device after its task has been performed.

However, according to a study published in the April 2013 edition of Jama Internal Medicine, only about 8% of retrievable IVC filters surveyed were successfully removed, and another estimated 8% of persons surveyed still suffered venous thrombotic events while the IVC filter was in place.

Attorneys with the Arentz Law Group, P.C. are currently providing free, no obligation legal consultations to those who have experienced complications related to an IVC filter. If you have experienced problems with an IVC Filter or would like more information, call 1-800-305-6000.