Lawsuit Filed After Bard PowerPort Replaced Two Times Due To Infections That Developed Long After The Device Was Implanted

A New York woman has filed a product liability lawsuit after she had to have her Bard PowerPort replaced twice due to infections that developed long after the port catheter device was implanted to administer intravenous drugs.

Danielle Nicosia filed the complaint (PDF) on August 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, naming Beckton, Dickinson and Company, and its subsidiaries, C.R. Bard and Bard Access Systems, Inc., as defendants.

The Bard PowerPort is a vascular access device, which is implanted below the skin to provide a port that allows the easy delivery of medications to a patient’s blood stream. It consists mainly of an injection port, where the needle is inserted to deliver medications, and a polyurethane catheter tube which carries the drug into the blood vessel.

Unlike other implanted ports, such as Port-a-cath or Mediport, the Bard PowerPort is marketed as a special type of port catheter, which is intended to withstand higher injection pressures. However, Nicosia now joins a growing number of individuals nationwide who are pursuing Bard PowerPort lawsuits, alleging that the catheter tube is prone to fracture and rupture, which can cause life-threatening infections, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis and other complications.

According to the lawsuit, Nicosia had a Bard PowerPort Clearvue Silk ISP8F port implanted on her left side in April 2019. However, more than two years later, in August 2021, she was diagnosed with a port infection, which resulted in the need for an additional procedure to have the Bard PowerPort removed.

In October 2021, another Bard PowerPort was implanted on Nicosia’s right side, involving a similar Clearvue device. More than ninety days later, that Bard PowerPort also became infected, resulting in yet another revision surgery to have the implant removed.

The lawsuit indicates the manufacturers were aware of Bard PowerPort infection and failure risks, but failed to adequately warn the medical community or patients.

“Defendants did not adequately warn Plaintiff or Plaintiff’s physicians of the true quantitative or qualitative risk of catheter fracture and migration, bacterial growth, infection and sepsis associated with the PowerPort,” Nicosia’s lawsuit states. “Rather than alter the design of their product to make it safer or warn physicians of the dangers associated with the PowerPort, the Defendants chose to continue their efforts to promote their defective product.”

August 2023 Bard PowerPort Lawsuit Update

Earlier this month, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered all federal Bard PowerPort lawsuits consolidated in the District of Arizona under U.S. District Judge David Campbell, for coordinated pretrial procedures.

Each of the complaints raise similar allegations, involving various injuries that resulted from a failure of a Bard port catheter including migration of the device, infections, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, perforations and other damage caused by a Bard PowerPort fracture.

As part of the management of the port catheter lawsuits, it is expected that Judge Campbell will coordinate discovery into common issues that impact all of the claims, and select a small group of representative cases that will be prepared for early trial dates, to help gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation. However, if the manufacturer fails to negotiation Bard Port settlements following these MDL proceedings, each case may later be remanded back to the U.S. District Court where it was originally filed for a separate trial date in the future.