Plaintiff Sandra P. has filed a products liability litigation against the manufacturers and makers of the G2 IVC Filter. The defendant facing these allegations is C.R Bard, and the plaintiff files the lawsuit in Arizona federal court, as have many other patients who have brought claims of their own as part of a products liability multidistrict litigation.

According to the master complaint from the Bard multidistrict litigation, the Bard G2 IVC filter, or inferior vena cava filter, is a device implanted in a patient’s inferior vena cava to prevent blood clots from reaching into the lungs or heart.

Typically, an IVC filter is implanted to forgo the occurrence of a pulmonary embolism, or PE, a condition in which a blood vessel in the lungs is blocked by a blood clot.

Blood clots can occur in the body’s lower extremity, a condition known as DVT, of Deep Vein Thrombosis, and can travel from the legs to a person’s lungs. If developed in the deep leg vein, it is termed a DVT, and a blood clot reaching the lungs is termed a PE.

According to the master complaint, C.R. Bard had specifically targeted orthopedic, trauma, and cancer patients but failed to provide sufficient documentation of the product’s safety and efficacy.

The IVC filter lawsuit alleges that the defendants have been “plagued with problems – all created by Bard itself – most notably, the absence of any evidence that the products were effective in preventing pulmonary embolism (the very condition the product was indicated to prevent).”

The complaint contends that after years of a multitude of patients being implanted with the Bard G2 IVC Filter, scientists began to study the effectiveness of the medical device.

Plaintiffs say that “as recently as October 2005, an expansive article published in the Annals of Surgery concerning trauma patients inserted with IVC filters concluded that IVC filters were not effective in preventing pulmonary emboli, and instead actually caused thrombi to occur.”

According to the results of that study, nearly twice the percentage of patients implanted with IVC filters had died in comparison to those not implanted. Deep vein thrombosis occurred in over five times the number of patients among those implanted with IVC filters. And IVC filter patients reportedly developed pulmonary embolism – the condition these filters are supposed to prevent – at twice the frequency of non-implanted patients.

The master complaint says that “this Annals of Surgery study – and many others referenced by it – now shows without any question that IVC filters are not utterly ineffective but that they are themselves a health hazard.”

The Bard G2 IVC Filter Lawsuit is Case No. 2:17-cv-01925-DGC, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.