Uncle Of Power Morcellator Lawsuit Plaintiff Testifies In Front Of FDA

September 14, 2015 – – Tracey & Fox have reported that on May 1st, 2014, the second power morcellator lawsuit was filed by a woman living in New York in the U.S. District Court Western District of New York under case number 6:14-cv-06218. Although the plaintiff is now deceased, her family has continued to speak out about the dangers of the power morcellator. Her widower has pursued the lawsuit on her behalf and her uncle testified at a hearing convened by the FDA to review potential dangers of morcellation. At this time, the lawsuit is set to go to trial.

The plaintiff, in this case, had undergone a hysterectomy at the Strong Memorial Hospital of the University of Rochester Medical Center in 2012. Her surgeon had used a power morcellator to remove the uterus. Prior to her surgery, she had pre-surgical testing which did not give any indication that she had uterine cancer. After her surgery, she was diagnosed with cancer, a form known as leiomyosarcoma.

Following her diagnosis, the plaintiff was treated with aggressive chemotherapy. Despite this aggressive treatment, the cancer spread throughout her body and she passed away five months after filing the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, which was filed against Ethicon, a division of Johnson & Johnson, states that the “defendant herein failed to warn about the possibility of dissemination of an occult uterine leiomyosarcoma throughout the peritoneal cavity” and that the “defendants were aware of the risks, complications, and/or adverse events associated with their products used for uterine morcellation.”

The power morcellator, which is used in many laparoscopic surgeries including gynecological surgeries, is used by surgeons to cut through unwanted tissue and remove it via a small incision in the abdomen. The tool has been used for several decades, but recently the risks associated with the morcellator have come to light. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has estimated that up to 1 in 350 women undergoing hysterectomies and myomectomies to treat uterine fibroids have some form of uterine cancer. If the morcellator cuts through the cancer during a surgery, it can potentially spread cancer cells to numerous locations in the body where it otherwise may not have gone.

On July 30th, 2014, Ethicon announced a voluntary market withdrawal of all the power morcellators it had manufactured. While this isn’t a true recall, it was the first step that one of the many manufacturing companies of power morcellators took to remove the surgical tool from the market.

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