Vaginal Mesh lawsuits Heating Up as New J & J News Comes Out

Vaginal Mesh lawyers of Florida are getting ready to proceed with filing vaginal mesh lawsuits for Florida women. The vaginal mesh lawsuits are starting to heat up as new news comes out about J & J. " We are here and ready" says one Ft Lauderdale vaginal mesh lawyer." These women have been through plenty""We owe it to our Florida women with complications from these mesh devices to get them justice" . The vaginalmeshhelpline.com is taking calls feverishly from women upset at doctors, manufacturers and the FDA."These women are having severe complications"."The stories are horrific".says the vaginal mesh medical social worker. New news update details below….
J&J Sold Vaginal Mesh Implant After Sales Halt Ordered
By David Voreacos and Alex Nussbaum – Jun 26, 2012 12:00 AM ET

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), the biggest health-care products maker, continued to sell a vaginal mesh implant for nine months after U.S. regulators told the company to stop marketing the device, according to court records.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told J&J in a letter on Aug. 24, 2007, to halt Gynecare Prolift sales until the agency decided whether the device was “substantially equivalent” to other products on the market. The FDA cited the “potential high risk for organ perforation” when surgeons insert the mesh vaginally to support weakened pelvic tissue.
Enlarge image J&J Sold Vaginal Mesh Implant After FDA Ordered Sales Halted

On June 5, J&J said it will stop selling four vaginal mesh implants including the Prolift. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

“You may not market this device until you have provided adequate information” on 16 potential deficiencies and received FDA approval, the agency told New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J in the letter. “If you market the device without conforming to these requirements, you will be in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.”

The FDA cleared the device in May 2008 without ordering sanctions, after nine months of negotiations with J&J’s Ethicon unit. The company faces more than 1,400 lawsuits by women who say the mesh caused organ perforation, pain, scarring and nerve damage. Lawyers for the women say the device’s approval history could increase J&J’s cost to resolve the litigation.

“If a company knows the FDA tells them, ‘Don’t sell a device,’ they’re supposed to not sell it,” Adam Slater, an attorney suing on behalf of 150 women, said in a phone interview. “It’s egregious that J&J was selling the device without clearance.”
Letter Unsealed

The 2007 letter was part of a group of documents filed under seal in state court in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and made public in May at the request of Slater, a partner at Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman LLC in Roseland, New Jersey. Lawsuits also are pending in federal court in Charleston, West Virginia.

J&J began selling the Prolift in 2005 without filing a new application after determining on its own that it was substantially similar to the Gynemesh, a company device already approved by the FDA, said Matthew Johnson, a J&J spokesman, in an e-mail. The device maker relied on FDA guidance for when companies must submit new applications, Johnson said.

The FDA disagreed with J&J’s interpretation and required a new application that prompted questions in the August 2007 letter, Morgan Liscinsky, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

J&J faced no sanctions because the FDA determined that the company applied the guidance in good faith and it “promptly complied” when the agency required a new application, Liscinsky said.
Fines, Injunctions

Sanctions for selling products without approval may include fines, injunctions against a company or senior managers and the seizure of illegally marketed devices, Liscinsky said.

The August 2007 letter was “only one part of an extended dialogue with FDA in 2007-08, and it is out of context,” Johnson said in the e-mail. “Throughout this process, our actions were responsible, appropriate and consistent with FDA regulations.”

Henry G. Garrard III, a lawyer who represents women suing in federal court in Charleston, said the FDA’s failure to take additional steps to halt Prolift sales or to sanction J&J raises questions about the agency’s power to protect patients.

“Companies know the FDA has little enforcement ability and scarce resources,” Garrard, of Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley PC in Athens, Georgia, said in a phone interview.

“Every woman in America who has been implanted with these devices absolutely should be outraged,” he said. “They should be mad at the company because the company knew they could get away with it.”
Ordered Study

Surgeons thread mesh implants through vaginal incisions and use the devices to treat incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse, a condition in which weakened muscles fail to support organs. Almost 300,000 were used in U.S. women in 2010, the FDA estimated last year.

An FDA database of reported malfunctions, deaths and serious injuries shows the agency received 123 complaints about the Prolift from 2005 to May 15, 2008, when the device won clearance. The company said in a September 2007 letter to regulators that reported problems accounted for less than 0.5 percent of sales for both Gynemesh and Prolift.

An agency report in July found a fivefold jump in deaths, injuries or malfunctions tied to prolapse mesh inserted vaginally. In January, the FDA ordered J&J, Murray Hill, New Jersey-based C.R. Bard Inc. (BCR) and other manufacturers to study organ damage and complications related to the products.
Sales Declined

Manufacturers including J&J sold about $175 million worth of prolapse mesh worldwide and another $295 million for incontinence treatments in 2010, C.R. Bard executives estimated on a conference call that year. Even for top sellers of the devices, the products made up no more than 2 percent of company sales, said Michael Matson, a Mizuho Securities USA analyst in New York.

The numbers declined as lawsuits were filed, he said in a phone interview.

“The doctors aren’t implanting them,” Matson said. “The patients don’t want them.”

On June 5, J&J said it will stop selling four vaginal mesh implants including the Prolift. The move wasn’t a recall and J&J remains confident in the safety and effectiveness of the devices, Johnson said. The company will not withdraw the Prolift before its “planned discontinuation” of the mesh products over the next three to nine months, he said.

“Our decision to discontinue these products is based on their commercial viability in light of changing market dynamics,” he said.
16 Questions

In letters to state and federal judges, the company said that it will update labeling for one device, the Gynemesh, to allow only abdominal, not vaginal, insertion.

The FDA learned of the Prolift after J&J cited it in an application to sell a related device, the Prolift+M, Liscinsky said. The agency told J&J to file for the Prolift as well, and it combined the review for both devices before the August 2007 letter.

“Due to the complexity of this procedure and potential high risk for organ perforation, bench testing is not sufficient to demonstrate device safety and efficacy,” the FDA said in the letter. Bench testing refers to laboratory testing to determine how a device will function in a person.

In the August 2007 letter, the FDA asked 16 questions about the Gynemesh and Prolift, which are made of the same nonabsorbable polymer. The Prolift kit includes pre-shaped mesh and instruments to help surgeons implant the device.
Infection, Abscess

One FDA query was about a “significant number” of complications from 2004 to 2007 on the earlier device, the Gynemesh. The agency got 174 such reports, including for infection, abscess and organ perforation. Most of the cases required additional surgery.

The agency’s letter also found that labeling for the Prolift+M device was deficient because it couldn’t support claims that the mesh has “elastic properties that allow adaptation to physiological stresses.” In its response, J&J agreed to remove that claim.

Many of the documents unsealed last month include e-mails between J&J and the FDA over the wording of product labeling about the benefits and risks.

Six days before the FDA cleared the Prolift, J&J agreed in a written response to say in the label that the safety and effectiveness of the device, compared to conventional surgical repair without mesh, “have not been demonstrated in randomized controlled clinical trials.”

Rather, J&J wrote, the substantial equivalence to earlier approved devices had been demonstrated through other tests.

The federal cases are In re Ethicon Inc., Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation, 12-md-2327, U.S. District Court, Southern District of West Virginia (Charleston).

"says one vaginal mesh lawyer"These women have been through enough and deserve justice".