Medtronic Lawsuits

Several former patients have filed lawsuits against Medtronic Inc. after learning of the Sprint Fidelis lead recall issued on October 14, 2007.

These lawsuits alleged that Medtronic misrepresented the safety of the Sprint Fidelis leads and continued to sell and market them despite safety questions about the lead wires.

Some of the patients who filed the Medtronic defibrillator lawsuits allege that they received a number of painful, unnecessary shocks to the heart as a result of fractures that developed in their Sprint Fidelis leads.

Fractures in the defibrillator lead wires of other patients may also cause the devices to fail to deliver a life-saving jolt of electricity to the patient’s heart during a heart attack.

Experts say that although Medtronic conducted safety studies of the Sprint Fidelis leads after they were released, these studies were too small to accurately determine the safety of the product.

Some expert believe that the Sprint Fidelis leads—the thinnest ever manufactured by Medtronic—may have been too fragile to be safely implanted with a defibrillator. Despite this fact, Medtronic only issued the Sprint Fidelis recall after five patients had died while using the product.

Patients in both the U.S. and Canada have filed lawsuits against Medtronic seeking class action status on behalf of all patients who had used the lead wires.

Medtronic says that the Sprint Fidelis leads are more than two times more likely to fail within 30 months than other lead wires manufactured by the company.

With more than 235,000 Sprint Fidelis leads currently in use, financial experts believe that Medtronic could be facing even more lawsuits over the lead wire recall than the 1,000 it is currently facing over a 2005 defibrillator recall.