Shoulder Pain Pump Plaintiff Loses Case on Technicality

Atlanta, GAThere is little doubt that the use of a shoulder pain pump has proven debilitating to many. Some have won huge awards for shoulder injuries stemming from the use of a machine to feed pain medication directly to a surgical site and, specifically, into irreplaceable shoulder cartilage.

But not all shoulder pain pump lawsuits favor the plaintiffs in the end.

Witness what happened recently in the US Court of Appeals 11th Circuit in a case alleging that the use of a shoulder pain pump caused glenohumeral chondrolysis, a debilitating condition resulting in the breakdown of cartilage in the shoulder. The condition causes painful shoulder immobility and sometimes requires a complete shoulder replacement.

Shoulder pain pumps were designed as a means of delivering pain medication directly to a surgical site for expediting relief for the patient. While the device was approved to deliver pain medication into muscle, it was never approved for the delivery of medication to the shoulder joint itself. Manufacturers of pain pumps allegedly promoted this particular use of pain pumps to doctors.

The plaintiff in the aforementioned case developed glenohumeral chondrolysis two years after undergoing surgery to repair a tear in the labrum on his right shoulder, according to the 8/17/10 issue of Lawyer's Weekly USA. A product liability lawsuit was brought against Breg Inc., the manufacturer of the pain pump used in the case, and an expert witness was called to testify.

However, the 11th Circuit Court ruled the expert witness lacked a sufficient scientific basis to testify that the use of the Breg pain pump to dispense bupivacaine to the plaintiff's shoulder joint was the cause of glenohumeral chondrolysis.

According to the court, the medical articles relied upon by the witness were insufficient because they failed to explain "the mechanism by which bupivacaine damages cartilage, and none of [the articles] offered an ultimate conclusion as to the general causation of glenohumeral chondrolysis in humans."

As a result, the court concluded that the expert's causation testimony was scientifically unreliable and therefore inadmissible under Daubert.

It is unclear if the plaintiff will require further shoulder pain surgery due to the alleged misuse of the shoulder pain pump during the initial surgery.