Perhaps you've taken prescription medication after visiting your doctor because of an adverse health condition. Doctors prescribe drugs to treat a host of ailments, injuries or even chronic diseases. If you have had surgery or were suffering from a particular ill-health incident, your doctor may have convinced you to use a medical device of one type or other in the hope of improving your condition.

If you use a medical device, you have the right to reasonably assume that all necessary tests and reviews would have been completed to ensure that the product was safe for you to use before it left the manufacturer and became available to medical patients. Sadly, defective medical devices cause thousands of injuries, even deaths, every year in Tennessee and throughout the nation. If a failed medical device causes you or your loved one injury, state law entitles you to do something about it.

What causes the most defects?

It's not always only one factor that causes defects in a particular medical device. Sometimes, several issues come into play. The following list shows some of the most common reasons such devices may reach the marketplace or patients themselves when they never should have left the factories where they were made:

  • If device designers rush through the product development phase, they might miss potential signs of malfunction of other defects.
  • Clinical trials may be flawed.
  • Many times, a product itself will work just fine insofar as it's meant to do; however, patients are at risk for injury if a device lacks adequate instruction or warning labels.
  • In certain products or medical devices, contamination may create serious hazards to patients who use them.

Manufacturers, designers or other officials along the sales distribution chain may be aware of negative data that suggests patients may be in danger if they use a particular product. However, if they choose to ignore the information, it can prove disastrous, if not fatal.

After the injury

If you suffer an infection, illness or injury because of a defective medical device, the adverse effects of the situation may be immediate and have far-reaching impacts well into your future. Such situations may also expose you to additional financial strain because of treatments necessary to resolve the issue. You should not have to bear the financial burden associated with a failed medical device, which is why the law allows you to seek legal accountability against those deemed liable.

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