Bard PowerPort Blood Clot Lawsuit Alleges Doctors, Patients Are Not Adequately Warned About Chemo Port Risks

In a recently filed product liability lawsuit, a Tennessee woman indicates that design defects with the Bard PowerPort caused a blood clot and the thrombosis of her right internal jugular vein, resulting in the surgical removal of the chemo port months after it was implanted to administer colon cancer treatments.

The Bard PowerPort is a vascular access device, which is implanted below the skin to provide a port that allows the easy delivery of medications to a patient’s blood stream. It consists mainly of an injection port, where the needle is inserted to deliver medications, and a polyurethane catheter tube which carries the drug into the blood vessel.

Beverly Bigsbee filed the complaint (PDF) in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey on August 28, accusing Becton, Dickinson and Company and its subsidiaries, C.R. Bard, Inc. and Bard Access Systems, Inc., of failing to disclose known risks associated with the chemo port to patients and the medical community.

Unlike other implanted ports, such as Port-a-cath or Mediport, the Bard PowerPort is marketed as a special type of port catheter, which is intended to withstand higher injection pressures. However, Bigsbee now joins a growing number of individuals nationwide who are pursuing Bard PowerPort blood clot lawsuits, alleging that the catheter tube is prone to fracture and rupture, which can cause life-threatening infections, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis and other complications.

According to the lawsuit, Bigsbee had a Bard PowerPort implanted in her right jugular vein in September 2018, to make it easier for her to receive chemotherapy drugs to treat her colon carcinoma. However, about six months later, in March 2019, she sought medical care due to pain and tenderness in her neck.

Doctors determined the pain was due to a blood clot and thrombosis of her right internal jugular vein, related to the chemo port. As a result of the complications, the PowerPort implant was surgically removed at that time.

The lawsuit accuses the manufacturers of knowing about the risks, but staying silent in order to keep profiting from the device.

“Soon after the PowerPort was introduced to the market, which was years before Plaintiff was implanted with her Device, Defendants began receiving large numbers of Adverse Event Reports from health care providers reporting that the PowerPort was precipitating the development of serious blood clots and the internal jugular vein thrombosis in intended users, post-implantation,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants knew or should have known that the PowerPort had a substantially higher failure rate than other similar products on the market, yet Defendants failed to adequately warn healthcare providers and consumers of this fact.”

Bigsbee’s lawsuit indicates PowerPort systems carry an increased risk of:

• Death
• Hemorrhage
• Internal jugular vein thrombosis
• Thromboembolism
• Infections and sepsis
• Cardiac arrhythmia
• Severe and persistent pain
• Perforation of tissues, vessels and organs
• The need for revision surgery

September 2023 Bard PowerPort Lawsuit Update

With a growing number of similar claims being filed throughout the federal court system, each raising similar allegations that Bard failed disclose the potential chemo port risks, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) decided last month to consolidate all Bard PowerPort lawsuits in the District of Arizona, where U.S. District Judge David Campbell was assigned to preside over coordinated pretrial procedures.

Each of the complaints involve injuries that allegedly resulted from a failure of a Bard port catheter, including migration of the device, infections, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, perforations and other damage caused by a Bard PowerPort fracture.

As part of the management of the port catheter lawsuits, it is expected that Judge Campbell will coordinate discovery into common issues that impact all of the claims, and select a small group of representative cases that will be prepared for early trial dates, to help gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation. However, if the manufacturer fails to negotiation Bard Port settlements following these MDL proceedings, each case may later be remanded back to the U.S. District Court where it was originally filed for a separate trial date in the future.