Cases of individuals who have suffered heart attacks soon after receiving dialysis from Fresenius Medical Care have been reported across the country. Â Anyone who has had problems while on dialysis with Fresenius Medical Care needs to be aware of their rights and make sure that your treatment on GranuFlo and NaturaLyte does not effect your health ongoing.
Dialysis is a process which uses a machine and a membrane to remove waste products from the body which normally the kidneys would remove.
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The kidney also normally adds bicarbonate to the
bloodstream which reduces the levels of acidity in the blood.
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GranuFlo and NaturaLyte solutions used during
dialysis to add bicarbonate, acid and fluid back into the patient’s blood
stream at different levels.
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Both GranuFlo and NaturaLyte are made by
Fresenius, used by Fresenius and sold to other dialysis centers.
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From 2008 to 2012 both GranuFlo and NaturaLyte
included more bicarbonate in their mixture than they were supposed to which had the effect of causing metabolic alkalosis which increases the risk of heart
attacks, hearts stopping, irregular heartbeat, and strokes.
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For this reason, if you have had heart issues while on Fresenius products GranuFlo or NaturaLyte, we recommend you seeking immediate counsel.
An internal memo written by Fresenius in November 2011 warned that the use of GranuFlo was associated with a 6 to 8 fold greater increase of cardiopulmonary arrest and sudden cardiac death in the dialysis facility. That internal memo, which covered only a single year and a third of Fresenius’s clinics, identified 947 cardiac deaths. Fresenius sent that internal memo to its own network of dialysis clinics. But Fresenius sells GranuFlo® to thousands of other dialysis clinics as well. It did not share this information with any of them until almost five months later. The internal memo was leaked anonymously to the FDA in March, 2012, and a recall of GranuFlo and a similar product, NaturaLyte, was issued later that month.
If you or a loved one have been affected by GranuFlo, Naturalyte, or the dialysis process from Fresenius Medical Care, please contact Chhabra & Gibbs P.A. at 601-948-8005 locally or 877-317-8005 toll free.
Darryl M. Gibbs
