Women pressured into unnecessary surgery as part of class-action suit

Law firms are hiring marketing firms to coax women into getting unnecessary and potentially damaging surgeries.

An investigation by the New York Times sheds light on a major push by plaintiffs attorneys to convince women with vaginal mesh implants to get the devices removed. If they get them removed, they are far more likely to get a major settlement from one of the two major implant manufacturers: Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific.

In some cases, it seems, women who aren’t experiencing problems with the implants are nevertheless being convinced by aggressive marketers that their lives are in danger and they need to have them removed.

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Lawyers who are building major class-action cases against manufacturers hire marketing firms to seek out potential clients. Providing crucial financing are a number of major financial institutions, including banks, hedge funds and private equity firms.

Firms such as Law Cash, a New York-based firm, offer patients high-interest loans for the surgeries, which they only have to repay if they are later awarded a settlement.

The financing companies connected the women to doctors who were willing to quickly perform surgeries. The Times investigation focused on a group of surgeons in Georgia and Florida who were funneled patients via a company, Surgical Assistance, which served as a middle-man between the financing companies and doctors.

Although a sizeable minority of women who receive implants experience complications, those who get them removed are also very likely to have negative side-effects. The mesh bonds with the tissue, meaning that removal is likely to cause internal scarring.

“(S)caring a patient who has limited to no symptoms into removal is just dangerous and irresponsible,” Dr. Victor Netti, a surgeon and complex pelvic specialist, tells the New York Times.

A number of the women who talked to the Times about getting pressured into surgeries said that they have suffered severe symptoms following the removal, including incontinence, severe pain and swelling.

One woman, Jerri Plumber, is now suing Law Cash for its role in pressuring her into what she and her primary care physician assert was an unnecessary operation that led to permanent health issues.

All of the entities that have been accused of unethical practices deny that women were pressured into operations that weren’t necessary.

Reuters has also investigated law firms and others that were pressuring patients into the surgeries.