Posted On July 25, 2018 Personal Injury
When you began using Essure to prevent pregnancy, you didn’t sign up for organ damage, a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, or any of the other side effects linked to the device. You had no idea how much harm a supposedly safe birth control implant could cause.
Yet tens of thousands of women have now experienced major adverse events from Essure tubal sterilization. For years, the best thing these women could do was continue drawing attention to Essure birth control side effects and pursue their own Essure device lawsuits. Until July 20, 2018, when Bayer finally announced that it would be ending the sales of the Essure medical device. Interestingly, the announcement that the company would discontinue the device for, business reasons, came just a week before the drop of The Bleeding Edge, a Netflix original documentary on the dangers of medical devices, including Essure. At the time that Bayer announced its plans to discontinue Essure, at the end of 2018, not immediately, more than 16,000 Essure lawsuits had already been filed.
If you were one of these numerous Essure victims, you need to protect your legal rights. You’re likely to need expensive and invasive surgery to deal with the problems Essure has caused, and the birth control implant’s maker, not you, should be the one to pay for it.
Console and Associates has 25 years of experience handling personal injury claims. Over that time, we’ve worked with law firms across the country, including those that handle essure claims. If we cannot handle a claim, our goal is to connect you with an experienced attorney who can. If you suffered after receiving an essure implant, call today. We’ll ask you a few questions so that we can put you in touch with the right attorney.
Here’s what you’ll find in this article:
If you remember hearing about Essure in the news before, you might wonder what’s different now. As early as 2015, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) began investigating the safety of the device. Despite having been on the market for 13 years already, the FDA became concerned about the ,growing number of adverse event reports, linked to Essure birth control implants.
In 2016, the FDA announced that Essure packaging would carry a black box warning, the FDA’s strictest warning. Requiring product packaging to warn women of the Essure risks before they get the implant is one step toward fixing the problem. For women already harmed by Essure, though, this change comes far too late.
Now that the Essure dangers are finally making the news, victims of the dangerous device are coming forward.
You’ve seen the headlines on major news outlets. You’ve seen the Essure lawsuit commercials. But it’s not enough to just watch the Essure news of 2018. You need to take action to protect yourself. Your legal rights won’t last forever, so don’t wait to get your Essure injury claim started.
How much money could you get for your Essure birth control lawsuit? It’s hard to say just yet, with so many claims against the device’s manufacturer pending. Already, Bayer has reported losses of $413,000,000 related to its legal troubles with Essure, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
When serious adverse events from using Essure have derailed your life, you deserve compensation for every one of your losses. With the right attorney on your side, you can get an Essure settlement that covers the medical expenses you have accrued, the pain and suffering you have been through, and all of the harms you’ve experienced.
Even if you use Essure birth control, you might not know how the device works or what it actually is. A number of Essure users have reported that their questions and concerns about the implant were ignored or dismissed.
It’s time you got answers.
Essure is a permanent birth control method for women who are sure that they are done having children. The Essure system consists of two small, flexible metal coils that are implanted into the fallopian tubes.
Essure’s manufacturer is Bayer AG, a global giant headquartered in Germany that brings in tens of millions of dollars in chemical sales each year. Bayer subsidiary Conceptus Inc. first developed the Essure procedure.
The coils that compose Essure are made of metal, most notably stainless steel, titanium, and nickel, and polyester fibers.
In some patients, Essure material can cause an allergic or hypersensitivity reaction. An allergic reaction to Essure may cause itching, hives, swelling, and a rash. Because the implant is intended to be permanent, it’s difficult to take out the aggravating metal.
Unlike many forms of birth control, such as the pill, Essure contraceptive doesn’t expose women to any hormones or chemicals. Instead, the polyester fibers prevent pregnancy by causing inflammation within the fallopian tubes, intentionally, though it might sound strange.
This inflammation causes scar tissue to develop. Over time, this scar tissue blocks the fallopian tubes, preventing eggs from becoming fertilized. It can take three to six months for this scar tissue to develop fully enough to prevent pregnancy, according to Mayo Clinic. During that time, a backup method of birth control is necessary to prevent pregnancy.
Already, thousands of women across the nation are moving forward with Essure claims. They’re fighting for full compensation. They’re refusing to let the manufacturer get away with causing so much harm to so many people.
You could be one of these women fighting for your rights and fighting to make a difference.
Besides these alarming problems, there are also a number of less harmful, but still unwanted, Essure implant side effects.
Less serious Essure complications include:
From the time Essure emerged on the market in 2002 through the end of 2016, the FDA received 14,919 reports of problems. The real number of Essure issues could be far higher. Essure Problems, a Facebook support group started by a woman who suffered multiple problems with the medical device, now has more than 33,500 members.
Essure risks run the gamut from uncomfortable side effects to life-threatening adverse events. The most serious dangers, the ones that most commonly result in Essure birth control lawsuits, include:
Any one of these events, as well as any other serious complication, could entitle you to compensation.
When a doctor places Essure coils into your fallopian tubes, the plan is for those coils to remain there permanently. But that doesn’t always happen, and the consequences can be serious.
The Essure implant is supposed to remain lodged in the fallopian tubes, causing no harm other than the inflammation needed to create scar tissue. In some instances, though, the metal coil perforates or punctures the fallopian tubes or the wall of another organ, such as the:
Essure perforation can occur for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the doctor doesn’t place the coils in the fallopian tubes quite right. Even implanting the device a little too far into the fallopian tube can increase the risk of perforation.
Other times, the implants break, and pieces of the metal coils are what puncture the organs.
Even a properly placed and intact device may end up perforating the organs, perhaps due to a spasm of the fallopian tubes or for unknown reasons.
Once an Essure coil punctures the fallopian tubes, it can move throughout the body. At least 1,485 women have reported problems with Essure migration to the FDA.
These small metal coils can cause large amounts of damage. Women who are suffering from Essure migration often report symptoms such as debilitating abdominal or low back pain, headaches, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and abnormal bleeding.
Depending on where the device migrates to, patients might face further problems. For example, if an Essure device that moves to your bowel, colon, or intestines, you may need to undergo emergency surgery.
Often, doctors use imaging tests like X-rays to look for migrating Essure coils. In some disturbing instances, the implants have mysteriously vanished. Even an X-ray scan can’t detect where the coils have gone, only that they’re not still in the fallopian tubes where they were supposed to be.
While tubal perforation typically happens before an Essure implant can migrate, some migrations occur without signs of perforation. Incorrect placement is thought to be the cause of these migrations. The migrating coils can still cause damage to the organs to which they travel.
When you and your doctor decided that Essure was the right treatment for you, you didn’t think it would cause serious damage to organs throughout your body. You couldn’t have expected this to happen. Now that the device has put you at risk, pursuing an Essure birth control lawsuit could be your only option for getting justice.
When you first undergo the Essure placement procedure, some mild pain is normal. But what if it’s not just fleeting cramps that you suffer? What if your Essure experience brings on the kind of incapacitating pain that keeps you from living your life? And what if it lasts for years?
Some women suffer so much pain when using Essure that they simply can’t function. Thanks to the device, they can no longer take care of their family. They can’t work. In some of the most serious cases, they can’t even get out of bed in the morning.
What’s truly sad is that, because Essure is supposed to be so safe and reliable, many of these women have a hard time convincing their doctors that something is wrong. To have any hope of getting their lives back, these women need to have this permanent implant removed. Unfortunately, this process is far more difficult and involved than the original placement procedure.
Pain is the most common Essure problem. The FDA has received 10,746 reports of women suffering severe pain when using the Essure system.
If you’d had any idea that your birth control would cause you the kind of pain that ruins your life, you never would have gone through with this.
The FDA has learned of more than 2,400 Essure issues involving nickel allergies, heavy metal toxicity, and other instances of ,patient-device incompatibility., Nickel found in the nickel-titanium alloy used in Essure coils can leech into the fallopian tubes.
Among patients who have a nickel allergy, severe reactions can result. The rash, hives, itching, and swelling that go along with an allergic reaction might seem puzzling at first.
Many women are unaware that the implants contain nickel or that they can have this effect. It may take time for patients suffering from an allergic reaction to nickel to rule out other possible causes. It doesn’t help that doctors often dismiss legitimate problems as being unrelated to Essure.
A lot of these allergic reaction problems could be avoided if Essure wasn’t used in patients with a known nickel or metal allergy. Believe it or not, that was the practice at one time. The product carried a nickel warning when the FDA approved first it, but Bayer later had the FDA remove that warning so it could better compete with a similar (now discontinued) sterilization method, according to ABC News. As a result, patients who shouldn’t receive Essure are getting the metal implant without even knowing that it contains nickel.
Removing the aggravating nickel used in an Essure coil isn’t easy. The implants are permanent. They’re not meant to be taken back out, and there’s no easy way to do so.
It’s wrong for a company to hold back data, intentionally keeping patients in the dark about safety risks. Medical device manufacturers have a responsibility to inform patients of the risks, even if those risks aren’t exactly good for business.
The FDA has learned of at least 30 deaths linked to Essure. These tragedies include the deaths of adult women, stillborn babies, and infants who were born alive but did not survive.
Any complication that causes severe blood loss or serious damage to an organ could potentially prove fatal if the woman doesn’t get treatment in time. Essure can create serious risks for what would otherwise be healthy pregnancies, and both the mother and the baby can suffer as a result.
It is possible to take out Essure implants, a good thing, since so many women have serious issues with the device. But Essure removal is a lot more involved, and expensive, than inserting the original device.
In an Essure removal, doctors must go in and surgically take out the coils. In some surgeries, doctors are able to leave most of the reproductive system intact. In others, patients lose their entire fallopian tubes, ovaries, and even uteruses.
In the decade since the first successful removal of Essure coils, more procedures have been done. Yet, the best method of removal, still is not, entirely clear, according to The New York Times.
Essure reversal surgeries take different forms, depending on how much damage the coils have done and the reason for the removal. Some of the possible Essure procedures that women who want the device out of their body may undergo:
Removal of Essure offers many patients a chance to recover from the debilitating side effects they suffered finally. However, improvement doesn’t always happen right away, if at all. Some patients needed additional surgeries besides the Essure removal procedure to fix the harm that the device caused before they begin to feel better.
For many women pursuing Essure lawsuits, the expense of this procedure is more than they can afford. We’re talking thousands of dollars, and often, Essure removal isn’t covered by insurance. Health insurers often go so far as to consider Essure removal ,cosmetic, or ,elective,, yes, even if the pain the device causes has essentially ruined your life.
A complication from Essure can also cause you to need other kinds of surgeries. If you do learn that you got pregnant while using Essure, you may need to undergo a tubal ligation surgery to prevent future pregnancies, exactly the procedure you tried to avoid by choosing Essure. If the coil breaks or migrates, you might need surgery to repair the damage and get those broken pieces out. Some Essure users have needed complete hysterectomies due to the severe damage the coils had done to their uteruses.
The women who suffered harm from Essure shouldn’t be the ones footing this bill. That should be Bayer’s responsibility since the company created a defective product and failed to inform patients of the risks. Yet the manufacturer won’t offer you any help affording the surgery you need to recover from the problems their medical device caused. You’re on your own for Essure reversal financing, unless you seek out help, that is.
No one should live in pain because a manufacturer made a defective product. A defective Essure implant has very real consequences to the patients who undergo this treatment. When made incorrectly, these companies are putting thousands of patients at risk of infections or chronic pain.
If you’re experiencing pain and discomfort after receiving an Essure implant, call an attorney. If you don’t know who will take your case, call us and we’ll connect you with a national law firm that’s pursuing other Essure claims like yours. You won’t have to pay to speak to an attorney about your claim. If they take your case, you won’t have to worry about legal fees or expenses. Every law firm within our network operates on a contingency fee model. Your lawyer won’t get a dime until they win your case.
