A Chicago man has filed a Ethicon Proceed Mesh lawsuit against the makers the medical device used in his surgery claiming that it was defective in nature.

Plaintiff Henry S. was seen at a Chicago area hospital in January 2011 for a surgery to repair his incarcerated incisional hernia. This Ethicon Proceed mesh lawsuit states that his surgery was performed using an Ethicon Proceed mesh product.

After about a month post-surgery, Henry was treated for a seroma and wound drainage. A seroma is fluid that builds up underneath the skin that can develop after surgery.

Several years later, in July 2015, Henry went back to the same hospital at which he received his first surgery for complaints of chronic pain and a recurrent ventral hernia.

Henry’s Ethicon Proceed Mesh lawsuit claims that his surgeon removed his original hernia mesh product because it was “no longer adherent to the anterior abdominal wall, especially in the superior aspect of his abdomen.”

Additionally, the doctor said that “the mesh had come off from where it had beenpositioned on the superior aspect of his abdomen with the omentum from the trasverse colon adherent to the undersurface of this mesh and the omentum remained adherent all the way down to the inferior most aspect of the mesh abutting the urinary bladder.”

Henry believes that neither he nor his physicians were warned or adequately informed about the possible risks associated with his Ethicon Proceed mesh device. Because this device was defective, he claims, he was forced to undergo additional invasive surgeries to both remove the device and to repair his original hernia.

This Ethicon Proceed mesh lawsuit alleges that Henry’s severe adverse reaction as well as the need for surgical removal of the device was a direct and proximate result of the defective and dangerous nature of the hernia mesh product as well as Ethicon’s failure to warn about the potential risks.

He is filing this Ethicon Proceed mesh lawsuit on counts of defective manufacture, defective design, failure to warn, negligence and loss of consortium.

What is a Ethicon Proceed Mesh Device?

Hernia mesh products have been used for decades in hernia surgeries to help aid in the healing and repair of hernias. A hernia is a tear in the muscle wall of the abdomen or groin through which fatty tissue or other organs can protrude. If left untreated, hernias can be at best painful and at worst, very dangerous to the patient.

Hernia mesh products, like the Ethicon Proceed, can help heal hernias, but they have also been associated with a host of risky side effects.

The Ethicon Proceed has been connected with inhibition of tissue incorporation, pain, immunologic response, dehiscence (or the rupturing of a wound), encapsulation, rejection, migration and adhesion to internal organs and viscera. It has also been associated with bowel obstruction and hernia incarceration and strangulation.

This Ethicon Proceed Mesh Lawsuit is Case No. 1:17-cv-05538 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.