Two Duke University Health System hospitals have been forced to contact and notify some 3,800 patients that they may have been operated on with surgical instruments that were inadvertently rinsed with used elevator hydraulic fluid. Although the story sounds almost too incredible to believe, it actually happened over November and December of 2004 at two Duke hospitals in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina.
The first volley in a long series of personal injury cases came in the form of a lawsuit against Automatic Elevator Co. of Durham, NC, and against a medical supply firm, Cardinal Health Inc., of Dublin, Ohio, in April 2005. Seven other similar suits followed shortly thereafter.
The Duke Health System was slow in its dealings with Exxon, the manufacturer of the hydraulic fluid, and Duke was reluctant to make public information on the chemical makeup of the fluid, wantonly subjecting exposed patients to delays about discovery. One of patients’ major complaints against Duke Health has been the hospital’s reluctance to provide concise answers about the issue.
According to the Raleigh News and Observer, Duke released findings on June 28, 2005 from a report conducted by the research firm RTI International that the fluid coated instruments were unlikely to have harmed surgical patients. In November of that same year, Duke hired a clinical research firm, PharmaLinkFHI, to monitor the health of the patients exposed to the surgical instruments.
Ultimately, very few lawsuits targeted the University Health System. Most of the legal wrangling was directed at the elevator company and the medical supply firm that were at the center of the hydraulic fluid snafu; only one person has filed suit against Duke. The three year statute of limitations is scheduled to run for injured parties at the end of 2007, at which point the hospital may become protected from claims.