A Bair Hugger lawsuit has been filed, alleging that a medical device often used in knee and hip surgeries may promote serious infection.

The Bair Hugger lawsuit claims that one knee replacement surgery turned into a year of knee surgeries to repair damage caused by the Bair Hugger from an infection it caused.

The Bair Hugger is a type of warming blanket used to control a person’s body temperature during hip and knee surgery. The text of this suit claims that the device is widely used, and is found in more than eighty percent of U.S. hospitals.

The Bair Hugger warms patients by heating the air around the patient. However, this Bair Hugger lawsuit alleges that the warming blanket can create air currents which lift bacteria and other germs off the floor and into surgical incisions, promoting dangerous, potentially life-threatening infections.

Surgical theaters have carefully controlled and filtered airflow to discourage this scenario, but this Bair Hugger lawsuit alleges that the device interferes with this life-protecting process.

In his Bair Hugger lawsuit, plaintiff Manuel G. states that in March 2014 he had his left knee replaced during a procedure that used the Bair Hugger. His lawsuit further alleged that he suffered serious infection due to the device – a staph infection in his knee. This allegedly lead to at least five additional surgical procedures to repair the infection deep within his knee.

The knee is a surprisingly complex joint, and parts of it are avascular, meaning they lack dedicated blood vessels and usually heal more slowly than some tissues. Surgeons implanted, and later removed, a tube to pump antibiotics directly into Manuel’s joint.

Doctors also had to ultimately scrap the original knee implant and replace it with a new one. His Bair Hugger lawsuit holds that the device caused him permanent disability and suffering, and it took nearly a year to regain some semblance of normal knee function.

The Bair Hugger lawsuit holds that the device’s manufacturers have been aware of the drawbacks for nearly two decades. According to the text of the Bair Hugger lawsuit, a letter from 1997 to the FDA concedes that “air blown intraoperatively across the surgical wound may result in airborne contamination.”

Based on this, the Bair Hugger lawsuit alleges that many subsequent statements and marketing claims were fraudulent, and that the company knew, or reasonably should have known, that the Bair Hugger device was dangerous.

The Bair Hugger alleges statements made by the defendants in the year 2000 indicated that the device met HEPA standards for air quality when it allegedly did not, and that subsequent changes to the device actually made it more dangerous. Despite this, the company allegedly doubled down on their safety claims by stating that the Bair Hugger could not substantially change the air flow of a surgical suite.

The Bair Hugger lawsuit alleges that the makers of the device should have been aware long before Manuel G.’s surgery that the device could allegedly promote infection.

This Bair Hugger Lawsuit is Manuel G. v. 3M Company, et al., Case No. 3829, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.