TULSA (AP) - Several Oklahoma women are suing a California-based medical supply company over a device used to treat urinary stress incontinence, claiming the product was defective and caused them serious injuries.
Three lawsuits, filed Feb. 29 in Payne County District Court, also allege the ObTape Vaginal Sling caused chronic pain, infections and erosion of vaginal tissues, among other problems.
The women are among nearly three-dozen in Oklahoma, Florida and Georgia who have already filed lawsuits against the Mentor Corporation, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based global medical products supplier and maker of the device.
Mentor's general counsel did not immediately return a request for comment.
"We have found many women do not know they have this product inside their bodies," said Henry Garrard III, whose Athens, Ga., law firm is representing the Oklahoma patients.
Garrard announced the lawsuits at a Tuesday news conference in Tulsa, equating the ObTape to a "time bomb sitting inside a woman's body that's ticking."
Garrard said lawsuits are being explored among patients in at least seven other states, including New York, Arizona and Ohio.
The ObTape was removed from the market in 2006, three years after being introduced. About 36,000 devices were believed to have been sold in the U.S. since 2003, and were marketed to treat urinary stress incontinence, a loss of bladder control due to childbirth, old age or other factors.
The ailment is estimated to effect as many as 14 million people across the nation, mostly women.
"There's so many women out there that don't know why these things are happening to them," said Mary Snavely, a 53-year-old Stillwater resident who filed one of the lawsuits against Mentor. "They need to get to a physician and get checked."
Snavely said she experienced complications and pain almost from the moment the device was implanted, and it took six surgeries for the tape to finally be removed.
"It felt like someone had pulled my legs apart and just stretched them," she said at Tuesday's news conference. "I was finally relieved to know what caused it; you keep wondering what was wrong with you."
