A man has filed a clot filter lawsuit alleging he suffered severe injuries after receiving a C.R. Bard G2 Express inferior vena cava filter in July 2009.

Plaintiff Daniel G.’s clot filter lawsuit joins an MDL against Bard currently moving through the Arizona court system.

Plaintiffs allege they received personal injuries or that loved ones suffered wrongful death due to “defective and unreasonably dangerous” retrievable clot filter products, including the G2 Express.

An IVC filter is a small device designed to filter out blood clots that could possibly travel from the lower part of the body to the heart or lungs. Some people who are susceptible to blood clots developing in a deep leg vein, a condition known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) cannot tolerate blood-thinning medications very well. These patients are apt to be candidates for IVC filters.

When a blood clot travels to lungs, it is called a pulmonary embolism.

For decades, the IVC filters were meant to be permanently implanted, but “in order to increase sales of these devices, Bard sought to expand the market for prophylactic use among nontraditional patient populations that were temporarily at risk of developing blood clots,” alleges the clot filter lawsuit.

These newly targeted patients included those in the bariatric, trauma, orthopedic and cancer arenas. Bard introduced the first retrievable IVC filter (the Bard Recovery filter) in July 2003.

Problems with Retrievable Clot Filter Devices

According to an October 2015 issue of the Annals of Surgery, a study of more than 30,000 trauma patients indicated that IVC filters were not effective in preventing pulmonary emboli, and sometimes caused thrombi to occur. The Annals of Surgery reported:

• Nearly twice the percentage of patients with IVC filters died compared with those who did not receive them.
• More than five times the relative number of patients with IVC filters developed DVTs.
• More than four times the relative percent of patients with IVC filters developed thromboemboli, which is a blood clot blocking a blood vessel after it has been dislodged from another place in the circulatory system.

Reports of the clot filter migrating, perforating the vena cava, causing thrombus and clotting, and causing serious injury or even death began to appear in the FDA’s mandatory reporting database.

Instead of issuing a recall or pulling the retrievable clot filter from the market, the MDL alleges Bard protected its image by sending false information for its sales force to relay to concerned doctors.

By April 2005, Bard’s CEOs received a report indicating that 34 migrations and 51 fractures had been associated with their clot filters. Of the 51 fractures, 18 resulted in fragments migrating to the heart. Nine deaths had been reported.

In January 2008, the FDA approved the G2 Express clot filter that was implanted in Daniel in July 2009. According to the clot filter MDL, the G2 Express “contained no design modifications or improvements to alleviate the instability, structural integrity, and perforation problems that Bard knew to exist…”

The Clot Filter Lawsuit is Case No. 2:18-cv-02091-DGC and is part of the Bard IVC Filters MDL, In re: Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2641, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.