Houston, TXAttorney David Hodges is just back from a trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a total of 170 Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming (FAW) Blanket personal injury cases have been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation (MDL). Hodges will be among the 21 members of the legal leadership in a lawsuit against The 3M Company and Arizant Healthcare, the owners of the product.
In 2013, Hodges from the Houston, Texas firm of Kennedy Hodges, L.L.P. filed the first lawsuit against The 3M Company and Arizant Healthcare on behalf of Tommy Walton. The 70-year-old Walton had developed a deep joint infection after routine hip replacement surgery.
A year later, Hodges filed the second suit on behalf of Timothy Johnson who also developed a life-threatening infection following a knee replacement and “continues to suffer to this day,” according to the complaint filed with the court.
“The injuries tend to be pretty serious,” says Hodges.
“We use the term periprosthetic joint infection because we are talking here about an infection that occurs around a prosthetic joint that has been implanted.
“So we had Texas and Kansas cases going on for a while and we developed some pretty good theories of liability against 3M, and other attorneys across the country started taking notice and taking on cases,” notes Hodges.
Concerns about the FAW Blanket and the spread of infection during orthopedic surgeries like hip and knee operations go back at least 10 years.
The first concerns came, remarkably, from the doctor who invented the product, Scott Augustine MD. “I contacted 3M Company and said ‘you have a problem here.’ I created your problem but you own the product now and I think you need to do something about this,” says Augustine.
The blankets are draped over the patients and blow warm air over them to keep them from slipping into hypothermia during surgery. The concern is that heat forced up from the floor combines with contaminants and then creates a heat chimney full of germs that can contaminate the surgical area.
The body’s immune system can handle literally millions of germs that come into contact with soft tissue incisions. But surgical fields during implant procedures must be 100 percent germ free. So, while the Bair Hugger is considered safe for most “soft tissue” surgeries, the same is in question when it comes to replacing knees or hips.
“The 3M Company will say that the Bair Hugger FAW has been tested in breast, hernia and colorectal cases. Those are all soft tissue infections where you need millions of bacteria to overcome the body’s defenses to cause an infection - in this case we are talking about, as little as ONE bacterium can lead to an infection when it lands on a prosthetic joint during the implantation process,” says attorney Hodges.
Dr. Augustine has invented another patient warming device known as the HotDog that does not recycle warm air and does not, he argues, present the same potential for infection. The 3M Company and Arizant deny there is a problem with Bair Hugger.
“There is a growing amount of research that supports my criticism of the Bair Hugger warming blanket,” says Dr. Augustine. “Meanwhile, the 3M Company continues to say there is no problem and throw crap at me and my company. It’s all just a smoke screen.”
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