A man has filed a Bard IVC filter lawsuit over injuries he claims he received from the medical device.

William J. received the Meridian Vena Cava Filter implant on Jan. 18, 2013. Complications ensued, prompting him to file a 15-count Bard IVC filter lawsuit against C.R. Bard and Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc.

Bard IVC Filter Lawsuit Is Not First Report of Problems

Inferior vena cava (IVC) filters are designed to capture blood clots before they cause pulmonary embolisms.

Available as implants since 1979, IVC filters are small cage-like structures that are used as an alternative to blood thinners when a patient is at risk of blood clots.

IVC filters by C.R. Bard have been reportedly prone to breakage. Parts of an IVC filter that migrate to lungs, heart, or other organs can cause ongoing medical issues for patients.

Sometimes the IVC filter pieces embed in such a risky area of the body, doctors prefer to leave the pieces alone. There are reports of patients undergoing multiple surgeries to repair the damage done by traveling IVC filter parts.

C.R. Bard has been accused of negligence because the company was allegedly aware the filter systems were defective and unreasonably dangerous. The company is also accused of continuing to sell the filter systems even after they knew that weakened parts could break off inside the body.

The Bard IVC filter lawsuit cites design failures and failure to warn of possibly dangerous complications from the device.

NBC News reported in 2015 that C.R. Bard’s Recovery IVC filters were associated with 27 deaths and hundreds of problems.

The journal JAMA Internal Medicine published a study in 2013 after examining the management and complications of IVC filters in 952 patients at Boston Medical Center.

Of 679 patients who received retrievable IVC filters, only 58 of them were successfully removed. Physicians tried to remove the IVC filters unsuccessfully 13 times, 11 of which happened after patients had their filters in for more than 85 days.

Of the 13 unsuccessful removal attempts:

• 8 patients showed the devices had become embedded
• 3 patients had the filters protrude through a blood vessel
• 2 patients’ devices had migrated to an abnormal position
• 1 patient had a blood clot lodged within the filter

The Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (JVIR) also wrote about complications such as those mentioned in the Bard IVC filter lawsuit. The Meridian IVC filter’s design was based on the Bard IVC filters that had come before it: the Recovery, G2, and G2 Express.

The latter were observed in a study published by the JVIR in 2012. The study looked at nearly 550 patients with these IVC filters. The filters fractured in 12 percent of the patients, embolisms occurred in 13 percent of the patients, and doctors were only able to remove fractured pieces in half of the patients.

The Bard IVC Filter Lawsuit is Case No. 2:16-cv-03907 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.