Left inset: Darrell Schroll. Right inset: Ron Wood (Facebook). Background: The University of Kansas Hospital, which is being sued by numerous people for medical malpractice and wrongful death for allegedly failing to properly sterilize and disinfect open-heart surgery equipment (WDAF/YouTube).
Workers at a Kansas hospital failed to properly sterilize and disinfect open-heart surgery devices, leading to slow-growing M. chimaera infections and deaths, according to multiple lawsuits.
"I feel like I'm dying," Darrell Schroll, a local business owner and Vietnam veteran from Manhattan, told his daughter while suffering from a Mycobacterium chimaera infection.
"He was skin and bones," Schroll's daughter, Kristy Schroll, explained to The Kansas City Star. "The infectious disease doctor let us know that they could see the infection was in one of his eyes. They suspected it was in his brain. It was in his heart, his lungs, his LVAD, his liver."
Schroll's family claims the infection was caused by a contaminated dirty heater-cooler unit (HCU) used during an open-heart surgery that he underwent at the University of Kansas Hospital in 2019. Kristy Schroll has filed a lawsuit in Wyandotte County, accusing the University of Kansas Hospital and the company that manufactured the device, LivaNova USA Inc., of medical malpractice.
According to her legal petition, hospital workers failed to "properly sterilize and disinfect the subject LivaNova 3T Heater-Cooler device/system before using it for Darrell Schroll's open-chest cardiac surgical procedure with cardiopulmonary bypass."
The petition also accuses the hospital's "technicians, ancillary staff, nursing staff, physicians, healthcare providers and other employees, servants and agents" of failing to inform Schroll and his family about his "exposure to M. chimaera" and failing to evaluate, diagnose and "timely treat" Darrell Schroll for an M. chimaera infection.
According to The Star, numerous people are suing or have sued the hospital and LivaNova for medical malpractice and wrongful death in connection with HCUs that were used during surgeries on their loved ones and not properly cleaned, per their claims.
More than 30 lawsuits have been filed in Wyandotte County, alleging that 25 patients at the hospital contracted M. chimaera infections due to dirty HCUs. At least 11 of those patients have died and the others are living with life-altering health problems, The Star reports.
The devices have been replaced with "new versions" with changes "designed to reduce the risk of patient infections," according to Kristy Schroll's petition.
Thelma Wood, a widow from Olathe, claims her late husband Ron Wood contracted a deadly M. chimaera infection in 2019 during an open-heart surgery at the university hospital to replace an aortic valve. She is seeking $20 million in damages, according to court filings.
"It's just wrecked my world," Thelma Wood told The Star. "Nobody should hurt like this. Nobody. Just for something that could have been avoided."
Ron Wood died in February 2021 after his M. chimaera infection slowly ate away at him, causing dramatic weight loss and constant fatigue, his wife says. He was hospitalized for seven weeks before succumbing to the infection.
"He looked up at me, and he said, 'Call the paramedics,'" Thelma Wood recalled. "And I knew then that something was wrong, because he would not let you call them for being ill or anything."
Describing the hospital's alleged malpractice, Thelma Wood told The Star, "How could you not clean a machine when you're given instructions on what to do? … I'm so disappointed that they would let something like this affect this many families. And I don't understand why."
Thelma Wood added, "We could have had more years together — many more years together."
For the Schroll family, the feeling of lost time is shared.
"We feel like time was stolen," Kristy Schroll told The Star. "[Darrell Schroll] was the kind of person that led by example. He was the rock of the family. He was the person you could call any hour for anything … And I watched him feel defeated and angry and scared. He was very proud, and he felt towards the end that he had little dignity left."
Kristy Schroll hopes her lawsuit and others like it will ultimately make the public more aware of what she feels is "such clear negligence leading to all of these poor families and the victims of this who either have died or are now burdened with a catastrophic infection," per The Star.
"I want KU to be held accountable," Kristy Schroll said. "I feel like there were so many missed opportunities along the way, especially once the infections started coming, to try to investigate on their own and figure out why are these infections happening? And I am hopeful for myself, for the other families and victims of this, that there's some sense of justice in educating the public."
The University of Kansas Health System could not be reached for comment Sunday, but a lawyer for the hospital authority told The Star in a statement that it was "limited" in what it can share.
"The University of Kansas Health System provides care to patients with complex needs," said general counsel Dan Peters. "Our culture and decisions are focused on how best to meet those needs. Based on the information we had at the time, we took the steps we believed were necessary to keep patients safe, while continuing to provide lifesaving surgical interventions that otherwise would not have been available without this critical medical device."
Peters added, "When we learned about potential impacts of these devices, we proactively reached out to patients who may have been affected to support their needs. Today, the health system has all new devices with a design change that eliminated the previous condition that created the potential for infection."
LivaNova sent The Star a statement saying, "At LivaNova, patient care and product quality remain central to everything we do. The Company stands firmly behind the 3T™ Heater-Cooler device, having worked closely with global regulators to mitigate risk and ensure continued clinician access to this critical technology for lifesaving cardiac surgery. While we do not comment on the specifics of ongoing litigation, we are vigorously defending the product and company actions in these cases."