A IVC filter lawsuit filed by a widow from St. Louis alleges that a C. R. Bard IVC filter caused her husband’s death.

According to the IVC filter lawsuit, the plainitff’s late husband had an IVC filter implanted in his body.

IVC filters are designed to catch blood clots within the body before they can cause heart attack, strokes, or pulmonary embolism.

The IVC filter lawsuit alleges that the IVC filter “tilted” within the body, causing it to let blood clots through, which ultimately killed her husband.

This IVC filter lawsuit claims that C.R. Bard knew that there were problems with their IVC filters but continued to market the medical device.

To support this allegation, the IVC filter lawsuit cites an internal investigation by C.R. Bard, which allegedly indicates that they knew that there were problems with stability, tilting, and migration in their IVC filters.

IVC Filter Complications

IVC filters work like tiny, cone-shaped nets to catch blood clots. When blood clots form within the body, they can migrate, moving through the body to get lodged in the blood vessels that feed critical organs like the heart, lungs, and brain. This causes certain types of heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, and strokes, respectively.

The IVC filter is designed to be implanted in the inferior vena cava, the largest vein leading from the lower body into the heart. Since many blood clots initially form as deep vein thrombosises, this can prevent blood clots from reaching the heart and spreading throughout the body.

However, IVC filter lawsuits like this one allege that C.R. Bard’s particular models of IVC filter has design flaws that may lead to IVC filter complications.

Plaintiffs allege that these IVC filters have a high rate of breaking apart or moving around within the body which in turn causes damage and blockage within the circulatory system.

To back these allegations, the IVC filter lawsuit from Missouri cites a 2010 study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Internal Medicine, this study reported that C.R. Bard IVC filters “had high prevalence of fracture and embolization, with potentially life-threatening sequellae.”

This phrase means that researchers allegedly found evidence that C.R. Bard’s IVC filters appeared to break frequently and block blood vessels, which could lead to life-threatening complications.

IVC Filter Lawsuits

The IVC filter lawsuit alleges that C.R. Bard did not adequately test their IVC filters. To back this allegation, the C.R. Bard lawsuit points out that these IVC filters were approved through the 510(k) rules of FDA protocol.

The 510(k) rule says that if a medical device is “substantially similar” to existing technology, it may skip most of the usual FDA testing. The IVC filter lawsuit argues that this allowed C.R. Bard to sell a dangerous medical device while skipping FDA approval.

So many IVC filter lawsuits like this one have been filed that the court system has resorted to a process called a multidistrict litigation or MDL. An MDL is a process that groups similar cases together to help coordinate the legal system. Since IVC filter lawsuits makes similar allegations, they have been grouped into an MDL in a federal court in Arizona.