Between 2013 and 2024, contaminated Olympus duodenoscopes infected hundreds of patients at hospitals across the United States. At least 35 people died. The infections were caused by drug-resistant bacteria that no antibiotic could reliably kill. The patients had gone into the hospital for routine diagnostic procedures–gallstone evaluations, pancreatic biopsies, bile duct imaging–and came out with infections that would destroy their organs, land them in intensive care for months, or kill them outright.
The remarkable part is not that it happened. Medical devices fail. Infections occur. What makes the Olympus duodenoscope litigation extraordinary is that the company knew. Olympus knew its scopes could not be adequately cleaned. Olympus knew that bacteria were surviving the sterilization process and spreading from patient to patient. Olympus knew that people were dying. And for years, the company did almost nothing.
This page explains what went wrong, why it went wrong, and the legal options available to patients and families harmed by contaminated Olympus scopes. It is long. It is detailed. It is written for people who want to understand not just the claims being filed, but the science, the regulatory failures, and the corporate decisions that turned a solvable engineering problem into a public health catastrophe.