A Texas shoulder pain pump lawyer can help ease your pain

Posted by Bruce Westbrook

August 29, 2008

Apparently, counting money is time consuming. It’s so time consuming, in fact, that it seems to prevent large drug and medical device manufacturers from taking time to test their products fully.

Whatever the reason, too many manufacturers have unleashed too many products on an unsuspecting public without having them sufficiently studied and vetted. And as a result, the individual, not the big company, suffers. The little person, not the big manufacturers, endures misery, hardship and pain.

Such is the case with recent revelations regarding the manufacturers of shoulder pain pump devices for patients who have had arthroscopic shoulder surgery.

Such devices, when used properly, should help, not hurt. They can do this by delivering doses of pain-easing medication to the shoulder joint after surgery. But they fail in that task — and, in fact, can make matters much worse — if they are used improperly.

That’s what happened with shoulder pain pumps whose manufacturers reportedly directed doctors to insert the devices directly into the shoulder joint during surgery. This method, which was employed without sufficient testing, has proven to be disastrous. It results in postarthroscopic glenohumeral chondrolysis (PAGCL), in which the cartilage deteriorates, leaving bones in the shoulder to grind together — painfully, relentlessly and mercilessly.

One irony is that arthroscopic surgery is supposed to be less intrusive and painful than traditional surgeries and to have a faster recovery rate. Yet painkilling medication is still needed, and shoulder pain pumps are used to provide it. Flexible plastic catheters can deliver painkilling medication to the shoulder joint to ease pain for up to two days after surgery. But it’s believed that a high concentration of the painkillers bupivacaine and epinephrine delivered directly into the shoulder joint can cause PAGCL.

This ill-advised combination of drugs and ill-advised procedure were recommended by manufacturers despite the fact that the Food and Drug Administration refused to approve of them. As a result, many patients are now living with chronic pain — indeed, perhaps a lifetime of pain.

Some may be able to correct the problem via another extreme: having shoulder replacement surgery. Others may be living with pain for many years to come.

But for all who have suffered from this medical device misuse, another alternative remains. A Texas shoulder pain pump lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates can hold those responsible for this inexcusable suffering accountable for their actions.

Texas’ top personal injury law firm for more than three decades, Jim S. Adler & Associates offers a free case review.

Contact a Texas shoulder pain pump lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates today, and let him or her put your case on his or her able shoulders. Your recovery from shoulder surgery was supposed to be ended. Now let the true recovery begin.

shoulder pain pump