Bayer announced on Friday, July 20th, that due to weak sales of the permanent contraceptive implant Essure, the product will be discontinued. They also repeated the party line that Essure was safe and effective, ignoring the “thousands of injury reports from women and repeated safety restrictions by regulators”1 over the last couple of years. (They stopped selling the device in Europe last year.)
Currently, more than 16,000 U.S. women are suing Bayer over Essure. 2
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In May, the FDA told doctors that they had to show women a checklist of potential risks BEFORE implanting it, and this was after they had already put “multiple restrictions” on Essure due to repeated reports of “pain, bleeding, allergic reactions and cases where the implant punctured the uterus or shifted out of place.”3
In 2016, the FDA added its most serious warning to the device and ordered the company to conduct a 2,000-patient study, something they will likely be unable to do now because Bayer will not be able to meet its expected enrollment numbers for new patients.
Besides the pain, bleeding, allergic reactions, shifting and uterine punctures, women have also attributed mood disorders, weight gain, hair loss, and headaches to Essure.
We are more than happy to see it go as are thousands and thousands of other women.
