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S P E C I A L
R E P O R T :
T A I N T E D
S T E R O I D S
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ADVICE
How to Protect Your Facility in a Recall Situation
I
t didn't take long
for a victim of
tainted steroid
injections to sue New
England Compounding
Center (NECC), the
company at the center
WHY COMPOUNDING? Have a reason for buying drugs
from a compounding pharmacy besides cutting costs.
of the nationwide
meningitis outbreak that has killed 24 people. Last month, Barbe Puro, of
Savage, Minn., sued NECC, saying she "suffered personal injuries, emotional
distress, and has incurred medical and other expenses." The lawsuit proposes
a class comprised of Minnesota residents who received the tainted injections
since June.
Ms. Puro says she received multiple injections of the contaminated steroids
for chronic back pain, according to the complaint filed in federal district court.
As many as 14,000 people received injections from suspect shipments of the
steroid treatments produced by NECC.
The suit names only NECC — no practitioners or facilities — as defendant
for "its defective design and manufacture of methylprednisolone acetate"
and its failure "to use reasonable care when it designed, tested, manufactured, marketed and sold doses of methylpredisnolone acetate."
This seems to be the model for the other suits that have popped up in
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2012
