Routine Procedure At N.J. Hospital Allegedly Spread Cancer in Woman's Body

A woman suffering from an aggressive form of cancer is suing a New Jersey hospital for using a potentially dangerous device that she says spread cancer cells through her body during what was supposed to be a routine hysterectomy.

Viviana Ruscitto, 43, the mother of a toddler, said a power morcellator was used to cut and shred tissue so it could be sucked out through a tiny opening during the minimally invasive operation. During the procedure, it spattered cancer cells through her abdomen, according to The Record of Bergen County.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark, Ruscitto says a power morcellator should never have been used for her surgery at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood last fall, noting that the federal government had already discouraged health-care professionals from using them because of the risk of spreading undetected cancer cells, according to the report.

Ruscitto, who has been diagnosed with the rare cancer Stage 4 leiomyosarcoma, has sued the device maker, her doctors and Valley hospital, saying the metastases have spread quickly, obstructing her intestines and causing so much swelling she looks nine months pregnant, The Record said.

None of the defendants have agreed to comment.

The FBI announced recently that it is investigating the device, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about the cancer risk in April 2014, saying morcellation could “significantly worsen...the patient’s likelihood of long-term survival,” according to CBS News.

A judge in federal district court agreed last week to Ruscitto’s attorney’s request to take her testimony immediately in her room at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center because she may not live to attend the trial, the attorney, Demetrios Stratis, told The Record.

Ethicon, a division of Johnson & Johnson that made the devices, has advised doctors to stop using them and withdrew them from the market.

Before that, about 60,000 such procedures were performed every year, and at least one of the affected patients has been interviewed by the FBI about her case, according to the report.

Ruscitto’s suit is the third filed in U.S. District Court for New Jersey involving cancer that was allegedly spread by a morcellator, and it is among nearly two dozen around the country. The others are being considered by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation for consolidation, according to the Record report.

One such case involved Amy Reed, an anesthesiologist and mother of six, who underwent a hysterectomy with a morcellator at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2013. Follow-up testing showed she had cancer that had spread through her abdomen, according to CBS.

Her family has gathered more than 88,000 signatures on a Change.org petition asking for a stop to the surgery.