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 dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria that were extremely difficult to treat. The patients had gone into the hospital for diagnostic or therapeutic procedures involving the bile ducts or pancreas, including gallstone evaluations, pancreatic biopsies, and bile duct imaging. Some came out with infections that damaged organs, required months of intensive care, or proved fatal.
The remarkable part is not simply that it happened. Medical devices fail. Infections occur. What makes the Olympus duodenoscope litigation extraordinary is what plaintiffs allege Olympus knew. Olympus knew its scopes could not be reliably cleaned. Olympus knew that bacteria were surviving the reprocessing process and spreading from patient to patient. Olympus knew that patients were dying. And for years, the company failed to respond with the urgency patient safety required.
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 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.