During the course of surgery, a doctor may need to find a way to connect sections of organs or close wounds. One way to do this is through the use of sutures, a special type of thread. Another way is with the use of surgical staples. The Ethicon surgical stapler is pictured at right.
Doctors commonly use staples over sutures during surgery because they offer several advantages, including:
Hernia mesh is causing problems. People who have been implanted with hernia mesh have suffered adhesions (scar tissue that sticks together), inflammation, pain, allergic reactions, internal bleeding, infections, and many other injuries.
One of the hernia mesh products sold for years, Ethicon’s Physiomesh, has caused many of these health problems in patients. In revision or removal surgeries, the Physiomesh has been discovered to have shrunk, folded, or curled. Surgeons have found scar tissue surrounding the mesh. This scar tissue can cause severe pain and discomfort. In many cases, by the time the mesh is removed, the damage has been done and long-term problems remain.
What Is Hernia Mesh?
Even if you’ve never needed a surgical mesh implant, you’ve probably heard about a number of lawsuits due to problems patients are having with them. One type in particular has been the transvaginal mesh (TVM) implants in women. These TVM lawsuits are well underway, with tens of thousands of lawsuits currently pending. However, it appears another influx of lawsuits involving more surgical mesh implants are appearing on the horizon: surgical mesh used to treat hernias.
Treating Hernias with Surgical Mesh
First off, let’s briefly explain what a hernia is. A hernia appears when an internal organ protrudes through a wall of tissue (often a muscle) into another area of the body where it doesn’t belong. Depending on how bad the hernia is, surgery may be required to fix it.
Because hernias involve a hole in a muscle or other tissue, additional reinforcement is usually needed to close the opening and keep it from reopening. This is where surgical mesh comes in. The mesh often takes the form of a plug or sheet of biological or synthetic mesh and is surgically implanted over the hole.
Clinical studies have shown that using surgical mesh to treat hernias reduces the chances of the hernia returning. Each year hundreds of thousands of hernia surgeries are performed. Given their proven effectiveness, it’s no wonder that many of these surgeries use a surgical mesh. Unfortunately, a significant number of the meshes have serious flaws.
So maybe you’ve heard the news that Washington and California recently sued Johnson & Johnson for misrepresenting the safety of its transvaginal mesh (or “pelvic mesh”) products. I pulled the Washington lawsuit and read it. It is alarming. If Washington can prove the allegations in the complaint, it will be a damning indictment of Johnson & Johnson and the pelvic mesh industry generally.
The Washington Lawsuit
States can sue companies on behalf of their injured citizens. If the state’s attorney general decides that a “bad act” is harmful to enough citizens, her office can file a lawsuit on behalf of the state and the group of people who were injured. It is an important consumer protection function provided by the states. This is what happened in Washington and California a few days ago. The Washington Attorney General reported that 11,728 transvaginal mesh products were sold (and implanted) in women in the state. The attorneys general in those states filed suit against Johnson & Johnson and made a series of chilling allegations against the company for its marketing of transvaginal mesh.
Let’s look at some of the key allegations in the Washington State lawsuit. When I refer to “Defendants,” I mean Johnson & Johnson, Ethicon, Inc., and their related companies, who made and marketed several types of transvaginal mesh.
(Part 6)
Let’s get back to a look at recent developments with transvaginal mesh lawsuits. In two big victories recently, a Georgia jury awarded $4.4 million to a woman injured by transvaginal mesh, and a New Jersey appeals court upheld an $11.11 million dollar jury verdict.
Transvaginal mesh (TVM) is a plastic mesh product that has been implanted in women for many years to support weakened vaginal walls. Many women suffer from pelvic organ prolapse or stress urinary incontinence, and makers of TVM have insisted that TVM could repair these medical problems. Unfortunately, not long after TVM was marketed and sold, women began complaining of serious health problems, including erosion of the vaginal wall, infections, painful sex, and bladder perforation. The lawsuits followed.
Now let’s take a look at a recent jury trial and an appeal decision of an earlier jury verdict.
North Carolina Product Liability Lawyer Blog