Beyond CRE: VRE and Other Superbug Claims After ERCP

A Fatal VRE Case Puts a Different Organism in the Headlines

Most of the public conversation about contaminated endoscopes has centered on CRE — carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales, the organism involved in the hospital outbreaks that first drew national attention years ago. That focus is understandable, but it has left many families with the wrong impression: that unless the culture report said “CRE,” there is nothing to look at.

Industry press has recently reported a new lawsuit against Olympus alleging that a patient contracted a fatal VRE infection — vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus — after an ERCP performed with a reusable duodenoscope. The allegations in that filing have not been tested in court, and nothing about the case has been proven. But the reporting is a useful correction to a common assumption. The organisms named in these claims have included Pseudomonas, E. coli, Klebsiella, and enterococci, not CRE alone.

If you or a relative developed a serious infection after an endoscopic procedure, the name of the bacterium is not a threshold question you have to answer before anyone will look at the file.

What ERCP Is and Why the Scope Is Different

ERCP — endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography — is a procedure used to diagnose and treat problems in the bile ducts and pancreatic duct, including stones, strictures, leaks, and blockages. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases publishes patient-facing material on ERCP and the digestive conditions it is used to address.

ERCP requires a duodenoscope, a flexible scope with a movable component at the tip, often called the elevator, that lets the physician angle instruments into the ducts. That side-viewing, moving tip is what makes the procedure possible. Plaintiffs allege it is also what makes the device difficult to clean between patients. That design theory is an allegation under litigation, not an established fact, and the manufacturers dispute it.

For most patients, ERCP is done for good reason and without incident. Nothing here should be read as advice to avoid a procedure your physician recommends.

Reprocessing: The Step at the Center of These Claims

Between patients, a reusable scope goes through reprocessing — manual cleaning, high-level disinfection or sterilization, drying, and storage — according to the manufacturer’s written instructions. Lawsuits filed against Olympus, Fujifilm, and Pentax generally allege some combination of the following:

• that the scope’s design made complete cleaning difficult to achieve in real-world hospital conditions
• that the reprocessing instructions supplied with the device were inadequate to eliminate contamination
• that the manufacturer knew of infection reports and did not adequately warn hospitals or patients

These are contested claims. No court has resolved them, and describing them here is not a statement that any manufacturer did anything wrong.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a series of safety communications about duodenoscope reprocessing and infection risk over the years, and has recommended a move toward designs with disposable components. Reporting has also described FDA warning letters to duodenoscope manufacturers concerning complaint handling and postmarketing surveillance study obligations. Any figure or finding you see quoted on this subject should be traced back to the specific FDA communication it came from rather than taken secondhand.

Two Recent Events That Are Frequently Misread

Two regulatory items circulate online in ways that overstate what they show.

First, an Olympus import alert reported in June 2025 covered bronchoscopes, laparoscopes, ureterorenoscopes, and reprocessing equipment — not duodenoscopes. It is not evidence that any ERCP patient was infected.

Second, a February 2026 correction involving MAJ-1443 and MAJ-1444 valves has been discussed in device-safety coverage. Olympus reported no infection complaints in connection with it. It is a device correction, not a finding that anyone was harmed.

A law firm page that presents either item as proof of infection is not being straight with you. Neither one establishes causation in an individual case, and neither one is a substitute for what your own medical records show.

Drug-Resistant Infections and What They Look Like

Antimicrobial resistance is tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, globally, by the World Health Organization, both of which publish plain-language material on resistant organisms and healthcare-associated infection. Peer-reviewed literature on endoscope-associated transmission is indexed on PubMed.

Symptoms that patients and families have described in the days and weeks after an endoscopic procedure include:

• fever, chills, or shaking rigors
• severe or worsening abdominal pain
• confusion, disorientation, or unusual sleepiness
• rapid heart rate, low blood pressure, or difficulty breathing
• readmission to the hospital, ICU transfer, or a long course of IV antibiotics

Sepsis is a medical emergency. If someone is showing these signs now, the answer is emergency care, not a phone call to a lawyer.

You Do Not Need to Know the Manufacturer, the Organism, or the Facility

This is the single most important practical point on this page, and it is where many people wrongly rule themselves out.

You do not need to know which company made the scope. You do not need to know which bacterium grew in the culture. You do not need to be certain which hospital or endoscopy center performed the procedure. Those facts live in records — operative and procedure notes, endoscope serial and reprocessing logs, microbiology and culture reports, infection-control documentation, pharmacy records, and hospital incident reports. Obtaining and reading those records is part of the work of evaluating a claim, not a prerequisite you have to satisfy first.

What helps to have at the outset is simply the rough timeframe of the procedure, the name of the patient, and a general sense of what happened afterward. That is enough to begin.

These Cases Are Filed Individually — So Your State’s Law Matters

There is no MDL and no class action for contaminated endoscope infection claims. That sets this litigation apart from nearly every other mass tort you may have read about. These cases are brought individually, in state and federal courts, one plaintiff at a time.

The practical consequence is that the law of the state where the procedure happened, and where the patient lived, does a great deal of work. States differ on:

• statutes of limitations — how long you have to file, which can be short
• discovery rules — whether the clock starts at the procedure or when the injury and its possible cause were reasonably discoverable
• wrongful death and survival claims — who may bring them, on what timeline, and what damages are available
• medical malpractice procedures — whether a claim against a facility triggers affidavit-of-merit or pre-suit notice requirements distinct from a claim against a manufacturer
• product liability standards — including how design and failure-to-warn claims are framed

Because there is no consolidated proceeding gathering these cases in one place, there is no national deadline and no single schedule. Timing is governed by your jurisdiction. General background on how the federal court system is organized is available from the United States Courts.

Wrongful Death Claims Brought by Families

Some of these cases are filed by surviving spouses, children, or estates after a patient died from an infection that followed an endoscopic procedure. Reporting has described wrongful death filings against Olympus arising from ERCP-related infections.

Wrongful death law is intensely state-specific — who is entitled to bring the claim, whether an estate must be opened first, and what the deadline is all vary. Families are often working through grief while a limitations period runs quietly in the background. If the death followed a hospitalization for a resistant infection after ERCP or another scope procedure, it is worth having the records reviewed rather than assuming the window has closed.

What a Review Actually Involves

A careful evaluation of a scope infection claim usually means:

1. Identifying the procedure, the date, and the facility from whatever information the family has
2. Requesting complete medical, microbiology, and billing records
3. Looking for the reprocessing and device-tracking documentation tied to that specific procedure
4. Assessing which state’s law applies and what deadlines that creates
5. Determining whether the potential claim runs against a device manufacturer, a healthcare facility, or both

You can read more about how our firm approaches these matters on our endoscope infection litigation page. No one can promise a particular result in any of these cases, and no honest evaluation begins with a number.

Take the Next Step

If you or someone in your family developed a serious infection, sepsis, or died after an ERCP or another procedure using a reusable flexible scope, the gaps in what you know are normal and they are not disqualifying. The manufacturer, the organism, and the facility are questions records can answer.

Because these claims are filed individually and governed by your own state’s deadlines, waiting has a real cost. Request a free case review and we will talk through what happened and what the records may show. There is no fee to have your situation evaluated.