In January he launched a lawsuit against Davol, the maker of Kugel Mesh, in an effort to recover lost wages and medical expenses, among other damages.
It is not known if the Kugel Mesh patch he was given is one of the recalled patches. However, of note is the fact that the Federal court in Rhode Island recently expanded its mandate to include all Kugel Mesh patches, not just the recalled products.
The Court is handling the consolidated lawsuits of countless Kugel Mesh clients.Kugel Mesh has been in the news during the last few years after failures of a collapsible plastic memory ring, posing a hazard to internal soft tissues and vital organs, including the bowel. While failure rates were minimal, they were sufficient to prompt a Class I recall, the most serious. Davol, and its parent company Bard, initiated design changes and strengthened the welds.
In the meantime, patients who carry one of the recalled Kugel Mesh memory rings in their abdomen will forever be wondering if and when the device inside them might fail, causing a potentially catastrophic injury.
It is not clear if Teague had a memory recoil ring as part of his Kugel Mesh package, or just the mesh patch itself. Nevertheless, Teague claims that the Kugel Mesh patch formed the basis for a serious infection.
Which begs the question, are implantable medical devices manufactured, prepared and packaged with the same degree of care, caution and sterility as the environment in the operating room?
Careful sterilization of clothing, instruments, hands—in fact the entire operating theatre as a whole—is standard protocol in an effort to mitigate potential life-threatening infections for the patient.
Thus, as a recent video posted on You Tube demonstrates, one would assume that when a manufactured device of any kind is implanted into a patient's body and becomes a permanent part of that individual's most intimate environment, that device and the packaging from which it was removed, is just as sterile as the environment in the O.R.
At least that's the assumption, when the assisting nurse is seen walking off to grab a flat, rectangular package, the outside of which has been duly sterilized to ward off any microorganisms which may have hitched a ride during shipping.
Then the patch is opened using a sterilized instrument, and is removed from the package by an individual wearing a protective mask and sterile gloves.
While the hospital ensures that the operating room environment is completely sterile and free from harmful, infection-causing bacteria, it is also assumed that the contents of the implantable device package, including the device itself, is just as sterile.
We watch as the Kugel mesh patch is rolled up, and placed into the patient's abdomen through a narrow tube in this minimally invasive procedure. We then watch, via a tiny camera, as the patch is unfurled and placed within the abdomen.
It's in there to stay. And provided the device is completely sterile and free from bacteria, one would assume trouble-free performance.
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Teague alleges his injuries were caused by the defective design, manufacture and marketing of the Davol hernia patches. His suit, filed in the Texarkana Division of the Eastern District of Texas, claims the makers of the patch were negligent for designing an unreasonably dangerous product, failing to reduce patch malfunction in the product design, failing to provide adequate warnings or instructions and failing to monitor its manufacturing process to prevent the defective patch from reaching consumers.
He is suing for past and future physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and loss of household services.