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UCLA Patient Sues Maker of Tainted Medical Device for Superbug Outbreak
An 18-year-old patient is suing Olympus America Inc alleging the company knowingly gave hospitals insufficient cleaning instructions.
An 18-year-old patient is suing a medical device maker, blaming the company for the superbug which recently broke out at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, infecting at least seven patients, killing two.
Aaron Young filed the lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Olympus America Inc., alleging products liability, negligence and fraud. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. He remains a patient at the hospital after allegedly being exposed to a tainted scope twice since October, according to court papers.
Olympus spokesman Mark Miller did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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The lawsuit alleges that the company redesigned its Q180V duodenoscope last year, but no clear method for cleaning it was offered.
“The manufacturer must ensure that the validated reprocessing protocol is disseminated to medical facilities and professionals,” the suit states. “Olympus failed to take these critical steps with the redesigned Q180V scope.”
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Instead, Olympus provided hospitals and doctors with a safety cleaning protocol for an older endoscope with a “significantly different design,” the suit states.
“As a result, end-users were not able effectively to sanitize and clean the new redesigned scope,” the suit alleges.
Patients at UCLA Medical Center May Have Been Infected with Deadly ‘Superbug’
Olympus management has known that the complex design of its endoscopes renders some parts of the device hard to access and as a result cleaning them is difficult, the suit alleges.
The suit does not blame UCLA for the superbug outbreak.
“The UCLA hospital complied with the reprocessing protocols provided by defendants in its operation and use of the Q180V scopes it purchased,” the suit states.
Despite such compliance, Young and other patients were infected with a “highly drug-resistant bacteria,” the suit states.
UCLA officials have notified 179 patients who underwent endoscopic procedures between October and January that they may have been exposed to the superbug, known as CRE. Hospital officials traced the infections to a pair of Olympus scopes.
- City News Service
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