Overview: Infant Injury Caused by Defective Product

Your infant’s health and safety is the highest priority for you, your family, and hopefully your infant’s treating physicians. Unfortunately, sometimes there are defective products, including medical devices or infant products, that may cause unintended harm to your infant.

For instance, medical devices can help save and improve lives, but if a faulty design prevents a medical device from being utilized in a safe and effective manner, it could potentially cause injury to your infant. Whether it is a faulty design or contamination during the manufacturing process that causes the injury to your infant, in some instances the injury is irreversible or may even lead to death.

How can medical devices cause injury to my infant?

Oftentimes, medical devices intended for infants require an operation or procedure to transplant the device inside of the patient. If a device is defective, or found to cause unhealthy adverse side effects in the infant-patient, it is possible that the infant will need follow up surgeries, continued medical care and supervision, and possibly even therapy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has to approve all medical devices before they are sold in the United States. However, this does not mean that FDA-approved devices do not necessarily suffer from manufacturer’s defects. Many problems and side effects can be observed and discovered throughout the passage of time.

If a defect is discovered in a medical device, it is the manufacturer’s duty to report the defect to the FDA and the public, in addition to providing warnings about the potential harm that may arise. If the manufacturer fails to warn the FDA and the public about a defective medical device this is considered negligent which can make the company liable for any injuries or illnesses that develop as a result of the product defect. The manufacturer may even be held liable for the death of the infant-victim.

What other types of defective products may cause infant injury?

Defective products that may cause injury or harm to your child include:

What are common risks associated with defective products?

If a manufacturer learns that one of their products is defective and may lead to potential harm or infant injury caused by defective product, they may issue a recall of the product from the market. The most common hazards leading to recall includ serious injuries, such as: