Bausch & Lomb pays out more than $250 million in lawsuits

Bausch & Lomb the manufactures of the contact lens cleaner ReNu with MoistureLoc has quietly been settled almost 600 lawsuits costing the company ~$250 million. Over 700 contact lens wearers were affected by a dangerous infection that eluded Bausch & Lomb disinfecting process which resulted in a world wide recall in recall in May 2006. Seven of the cases were so serious that the patient had to have the affected eye removed with an additional 60 cases resulting in corneal transplants due to a fungal eye infection Fusarium keratitis. To help avoid public scrutiny the company went private in 2007 after being purchase for $3.67 billion by Warburg Pincus a private equity firm.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 180 cases in 35 states from June 2005 through September 2006, when the agency's dedicated surveillance stopped, according to Dr. Benjamin Park, a CDC epidemiologist. CDC continued to hear of sporadic, unconfirmed cases in the months after MoistureLoc was withdrawn, Park said.

"Surveillance usually captures the tip of the iceberg and sometimes it captures a larger tip than other times," Park said in an interview. Leading eye doctors and government scientists concluded that MoistureLoc, launched in 2004 with novel disinfectant and moisturizing ingredients, was the only lens solution that contributed to the outbreak. Yet the mechanics of how it caused the problem are still not fully clear.

Some researchers theorize that the disinfectant, alexidine, absorbed into lenses at unusually high rates and the moisturizing agents created a biofilm in some circumstances that shielded and even fostered growth of the fungus to infectious levels.

With some fungal lawsuits still unresolved, the prospect of Bausch & Lomb's health care nightmare being aired in court has not entirely faded — which heartens some lawyers and doctors.

"The truth has been very carefully buried, and it appears to have been buried going back to the beginnings of the outbreak," said Dr. Arthur Epstein, who was chairman of the American Optometric Association's contact lens and cornea section during the highly publicized crisis.

"All settlements were predicated on silence about the clinical findings and blame and so forth. My hope was that what actually happened would become part of public record in a courtroom. That way, we'd be able to learn from it and move on and make sure it never happened again."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working towards instituting higher levels of testing standards for contact lens solutions so problems with this have a better chance of being avoided. Multipurpose contact lens cleaners like ReNu have all but taken over their older systems for the cleaning and rinsing of contact lenses.

In addition to contact lens cleaners Bausch & Lomb also manufacture a number of contact lenses. Soflens 38 (Optima FW) Contact Lenses are a popular contact lens manufactured by Bausch & Lomb. Visit our contact lens price best price and our contact lens coupons pages for money saving deals.

Source: USA Today