A Missouri man has added his CR Bard IVC filter lawsuit to an ongoing multidistrict litigation.

Plaintiff Ray N. says he was implanted with a Meridian vena cava filter in September 2012. Due to alleged defects in this filter, he claims, he suffered complications similar to those reported by other plaintiffs in the Bard IVC filter multidistrict litigation, or MDL.

This MDL is a consolidation of several individual IVC filter lawsuits against CR Bard, all of which raise claims roughly similar to Ray’s.

According to the master complaint for CR Bard IVC filter lawsuit, defendant CR Bard desired to expand its sales of this product and so it began to aggressively market the filters for physicians to use as a preventative measure with patients in short-term blood-clot risk situations.

Inferior vena cava (IVC) filters are made for individuals whose proclivity towards the development of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and Pulmonary Embolism (PE) exceeded the intervention of traditional treatment with blood-thinning (anticoagulant) medicines.

Patients who are unresponsive to anticoagulant therapy can develop blood clots in the lower extremities that can travel up the inferior vena cava to the heart, lungs and brain and create heart attacks (myocardial infarction), pulmonary embolism, and stroke.  These blood clots are extremely dangerous and sometimes fatal.

The IVC is a major vein in the body that returns blood to the heart after its oxygen supply has been exhausted. Its companion is the aorta which is the vital artery for carrying blood from the lungs that has been oxygenated.

Generally, an IVC filter is implanted if anticoagulant medicines did not work to reduce or eliminate blood clots. They have been an active and effective treatment for many years.  They worked by filtering clots out of the bloodstream before they could travel to the main organs of the chest cavity.

Allegations in CR Bard IVC Lawsuit

According to the CR Bard IVC lawsuit, defendant CR Bard was the first medical manufacturer to push a removable IVC device through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Later, when data came in regarding its lack of effectiveness and even its tendency to create the very problem (embolisms) it was supposed to prevent, Bard supposedly did nothing to pull the product from the market.

In addition to reports of embolisms being caused by the IVC filter and parts of the device breaking off and causing heart attack, bowel perforation and other problems, the lawsuit reports that CR Bard kept a few known cases of death hidden.  Rather than revealing these problems with the device to the FDA, the medical manufacturer kept negligently producing and allowing it to be installed in patients for the company’s financial gain.

According to the CR Bard IVC lawsuit, the defendants failed to warn physicians or their patients of the apparent risks of their device. They allegedly failed to do necessary scientific testing on the removable IVC filter before putting it on the market.