Despite a growing number of cardiac heater-cooler infection lawsuits against LivaNova, it was recently decided they would not be consolidated into a multidistrict litigation.

Sixteen cardiac heater-cooler infection lawsuits have been filed recently in various courts, all referencing infections patients have gotten as a result of cardiac heater-cooler use during surgical procedures.

A cardiac heater-cooler is a device that is used to keep patients cooled or warm during surgery. It does this by using temperature controlled water to cool or heat instruments like warming or cooling blankets and heat exchangers.

When a patient’s temperature is under control during serious procedures like open heart surgery, the outcomes of surgeries are better and recovery time is quicker.

However, even given the success of these devices, many patients have reported a cardiac heater-cooler infection after surgery. Because of this, many patients have filed a cardiac heater-cooler infection lawsuit against the maker of many cardiac heater-cooler devices, Italian-based LivaNova.

In January 2017, a group of plaintiffs asked the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to join all federal cardiac heater-cooler infection lawsuits together into a single court.

The purpose of this consolidation would be to simplify court proceedings regarding the same medical device, the Stockert 3T Heater-Cooler.

Consolidation of these cases would be beneficial, the plaintiffs argued, because these cardiac heater-cooler infection cases shared common questions of fact and this proposed MDL would prevent duplicate discovery as well as inconsistent rulings from courts.

The plaintiffs wanted the JPML to consolidate these cardiac heater-cooler infection cases to the District of South Carolina.

However, even though this seems like the best possible scenario to some plaintiffs, other plaintiffs did not want centralization. This group that was opposed to this noted that there are different legal and factual issues in each case. Instead, this group of those opposed to the MDL is asking for something called informal coordination.

In April, the JPML agreed and issued an order that denied the transfer of these cases saying that the MDL centralization was not necessary for these cases to move forward. Instead, the JPML argued, informal coordination was sufficient for these multiple cardiac heater-cooler infection cases.

Out of 16 possible cardiac heater-cooler infection cases, ten are being informally coordinated in South Carolina.

The JPML made mention of the fact that the six cases that were being worked on outside of South Carolina were the ones that opposed the MDL and that all of these cases were working hard to make sure pre-trial proceedings do not overlap.

If those cases were to be moved to a different court, the JPML added, it would “disrupt the parties’” success in moving their individual cases ahead.

Regardless, all mentioned cardiac heater-cooler infection lawsuits concerned patients who were exposed to M. chimaera or M. abscessus types of bacteria.

If you or someone you love was exposed to a bacterial infection after a procedure using a heater-cooler device, you may be eligible to take legal action against the manufacturer.