Baystate Medical Center is poised to notify over one thousand cardiac surgery patients of a serious heart surgery infection risk.

The heart surgery infection risk comes from a cardiac heater-cooler device formerly used at Baystate Medical during open chest surgeries.

The device is known as the Stockert 3T, and has been identified as a source of the transmission of dangerous bacteria in U.S. hospitals by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The notification will alert between 1,500 and 1,800 patients of the heart surgery infection risk caused by Baystate Medical’s use of the Stockert 3T cardiac heater-cooler device.

Baystate Medical Center’s Dr. Aaron Kugelmass called the notification “prudent,” and clarified that it was not being done in order to “frighten patients.”

Dr. Kugelmass is the vice president and medical director of the center’s heart and vascular program, as well as the chief of cardiology.

Instead, he said, the notification will be sent out to “follow to the letter” the rules on patient notifications.

The CDC has said, however, that the “overall risk of (Mycobacterium) chimaera infection is low relative to other complications following cardiac surgery.”

Indeed, the CDC has estimated that the heart surgery infection for patients at a hospital where this has occurred is somewhere between one in 100 and one in 1,000.

What is the Stockert 3T Heater-Cooler Device?

The Stockert 3T Heater-Cooler device, manufactured by LivaNova, is a device used during heart surgeries to warm and cool a patient’s blood and organs as necessary.

However, the CDC warns that during the manufacturing process, each Stocker 3T Heater-Cooler device may have been contaminated with a bacterial species of nontuberculous mycobacterium (or NTM).

Heart Surgery Infection Risk

An NTM infection carries specific symptoms, including night sweats, aching muscles, joint pain, weight loss, fatigue, and fever.

Symptoms can take months to surface after initial infection, which often means that patients have no idea what caused the problem in the first place. This can lead to missed or delayed diagnosis for up to several years.

This is a serious illness that, even with proper treatment, can take over a year to recover from.

It’s important to note that NTM is not a contagious disease, and cannot spread from person to person. And though heart surgery is certainly one possible way for a patient to be infected from NTM, it can also come from elsewhere in the environment.

Stockert 3T Heater-Cooler Device Lawsuits

A class action lawsuit against LivaNova over the Stocker 3T Heater-Cooler device complications was filed in February 2016 in Pennsylvania. The patients involved in the class action suit had undergone open heart surgeries in 2015.

If you or someone you love has suffered from heart surgery infection risk after undergoing heart surgery with the use of a Stockert 3T Heater-Cooler device, you may be able to file a lawsuit or join a class action lawsuit.