KU Med settles 6 more lawsuits involving alleged contaminated heart surgery devices
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- KU Med settled six Wyandotte County lawsuits alleging contaminated heater‑cooler device.
- Court order dismissed The University of Kansas Hospital Authority from lawsuits.
- LivaNova USA Inc. remains a defendant facing negligence and product‑liability claims.
The University of Kansas Hospital Authority has settled six lawsuits alleging that a contaminated device used during open-heart surgeries led to serious and sometimes fatal infections in patients.
The confidential settlements were noted in recent motions filed in the cases and confirmed in a judge’s order filed Tuesday in Wyandotte County District Court.
“Plaintiff and UKHA have reached a settlement in this matter, as set forth in a Settlement Agreement and Release,” the motions in each case said. “Plaintiff has agreed to dismiss all claims against Defendant UKHA with prejudice pursuant to the terms of the Agreement. No admission of liability is made.”
District Judge Courtney Mikesic entered an order Tuesday morning approving the attorney fees and case expenses and dismissing The University of Kansas Hospital Authority from the lawsuits with prejudice.
Dismissing a case with prejudice means it is permanently closed and can’t be refiled.
The six lawsuits were filed from 2020 to 2024. Three allege personal injury claims and three allege personal injury and wrongful-death claims against The University of Kansas Hospital Authority.
The lawsuits also allege negligence and product liability claims against LivaNova USA Inc., the medtech company that manufactured the heater-cooler devices used in the surgeries. LivaNova remains a defendant in the cases.
A heater-cooler device contains pumps that circulate water during bypass procedures to regulate a patient’s temperature.
The units are used in conjunction with a heart-lung machine, which takes over the function of the heart and lungs during heart surgery. Studies found that in contaminated heater-cooler devices, the aerosolized vapor is pushed out of the water tanks by exhaust fans, spreading bacteria through the air in the operating room. That bacteria can then enter a patient’s open cavity, leading to infection.
Lynn Johnson and Matt Birch, attorneys with the Shamberg, Johnson & Bergman law firm in Kansas City, which is representing the plaintiffs, declined to comment on the settlement agreements.
Jill Chadwick, spokeswoman for The University of Kansas Health System, declined to comment Tuesday.
In March, Dan Peters, general counsel for The University of Kansas Health System, told The Star in a statement that “when we learned about potential impacts of these devices, we proactively reached out to patients who may have been affected to support their needs.”
“Today, the health system has all new devices with a design change that eliminated the previous condition that created the potential for infection,” he said.
‘This was so preventable’
One of the plaintiffs who settled with KU Med was Thelma Wood, of Olathe, whose husband, Ron, died in January 2022 at 71.
She said the brutal infection literally sucked the life out of him.
“It’s just wrecked my world,” she told The Star in an interview in March. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. Nobody should hurt like this. Nobody. Just for something that could have been avoided.”
And plaintiff Kristy Schroll, who lost her 74-year-old father, Darrell Schroll, of Manhattan, to M. chimaera in July 2023, said the experience was devastating.
“We feel like time was stolen,” she told The Star in March. “He had a terrible end to his life, a terrible death filled with fear and anxiety and pain. And we feel that this was so preventable. It was just such an egregious death. And we’re angry. We’re really angry.”
The only Wyandotte County case to go to trial so far was filed in 2021 by Christine Nolte — the wife of Stephen Nolte of Raytown — and their son, Christopher. Stephen Nolte died of M. chimaera in 2020 after having heart surgery in 2019 at The University of Kansas Hospital.
On April 28, a Wyandotte County jury awarded $7.65 million in damages to Nolte’s family. The jury attributed 88% of the fault to The University of Kansas Hospital Authority and 12% of the fault to LivaNova USA Inc.
LivaNova’s share of the damages amounted to $918,000. The University of Kansas Hospital Authority settled with the Noltes shortly before the trial.
More than 2 dozen lawsuits filed
In March, The Star reported that more than two dozen lawsuits had been filed in Wyandotte County District Court against The University of Kansas Hospital Authority and LivaNova. The lawsuits alleged that 25 patients at The University of Kansas Hospital contracted the infection — which is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium chimaera, or M. chimaera — after undergoing open-heart surgery involving a heater-cooler device that hadn’t been properly disinfected.
In those cases, 11 of the patients died and others are living with life-altering health problems, according to the lawsuits. Almost all the cases now have resulted in confidential settlements with The University of Kansas Hospital Authority, court filings show.
An additional lawsuit was filed in January in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas, against LivaNova and an employee at The University of Kansas Hospital called a perfusionist, who was in charge of the heater-cooler device during the surgery of a patient who later died. That case is pending.
During the Noltes’ trial, LivaNova attorneys called the heater-cooler devices “life-saving machines” and placed the blame for the infections squarely on KU Med’s failure to disinfect them.
When the hospital followed the cleaning instructions, LivaNova said, there were no infections. But after the hospital’s chief perfusionist made the decision to stop disinfecting the water tanks and merely drain them daily, they said, there was an outbreak of 29 infections.
LivaNova attorneys also argued at the trial that there was no evidence that the machine used in Nolte’s surgery was contaminated with M. chimaera or that it was contaminated at the production plant. And they said the plaintiffs hadn’t ruled out KU Med as an infection source.
This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 5:04 PM.
