Morcellation performed during surgery led to a woman’s death from cancer, according to a morcellator lawsuit brought by her surviving husband.

Plaintiff John P. is bringing this wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the estate of his late wife Kelly.

John says Kelly underwent laparoscopic surgery to remove a presumed uterine fibroid in August 2012. Her surgeons used three different laparoscopic power morcellators to remove tissue during that procedure, he says.

Nine months later, her doctors discovered a metastatic fibrosarcoma had invaded her abdominal cavity, according to John. After a course of aggressive cancer treatment, Kelly finally died in September 2015.

John now argues that Kelly’s death was the fault of the manufacturers of the morcellators used during her surgery. His morcellator lawsuit names as defendants Karl Storz GMBH & Co., Ethicon Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and their related companies. All these companies are alleged manufacturers of power morcellators.

Morcellation and Uterus Cancer

According to John’s morcellation lawsuit, laparoscopic power morcellators are used to remove masses of tissue using laparoscopic surgical techniques. The device uses a grasper to hold tissue against a set of rotating blades, cutting the tissue into smaller pieces and removing it through a tube.

John says morcellation can shred small pieces of tissue that can remain in the abdominal cavity after surgery. This dispersed tissue can include cancerous cells that can spread through the abdominal cavity and attach to other tissue, where they begin to grow.

This phenomenon can lead to cancer-related complications months or years after the surgery that started it, John says. He argues morcellation can “upstage” pre-existing cancer, causing it to spread and progress faster. John believes this is how his wife’s uterus cancer spread and eventually took her life.

John believes the manufacturers of these devices knew about the risk of upstaging cancer for years without properly addressing that risk. He cites several different sources available to defendants as early as the 1990s that address the risk of morcellator cancer:

• In 1991, a patent was issued for a surgical bag used to capture morcellated tissue. The patent notes that one benefit of using the bag would be to capture malignant tissue and prevent it from spreading, decreasing patient morbidity.
• A case study published in 1997 reported that a patient who underwent a hysterectomy using a morcellator later died of uterus cancer that went undetected before her surgery.
• An article published in 2005 notes that use of a power morcellator could produce smaller fragments of tissue than other techniques, fragments that could end up implanting themselves within the body.
• In 2010, another article noted that if these fragments can implant and grow with benign disease, it’s possible that morcellation of an unsuspected malignant tissue could also implant and metastasize.

Based on these and many other publications available in the scientific literature, John believes the morcellators used during his wife’s surgery were “unsafe for their intended purpose and defective in design.” Yet despite the availability of information about the risks, John says, the defendants failed to properly warn patients and doctors.

The Morcellator Lawsuit is Case No. 2:16-CV-00071 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.