Bacterial infection outbreaks tied to contaminated Olympus duodenoscopes are not a single, isolated event. They are a 13-year pattern of incidents, multiple hospitals, and multiple bacterial pathogens — with one common thread: the difficulty of fully cleaning the closed elevator channel at the tip of an Olympus duodenoscope between patients. This page is a plain-English patient reference covering the most thoroughly documented outbreaks at U.S. hospitals.
Why a List of Outbreaks Matters
For a patient who developed an unexplained infection after an endoscopic procedure, the most useful question is often the simplest: was my hospital one of the ones where this has happened before? If the answer is yes, two things become easier — identifying the bacteria that caused your infection as part of a known pattern, and finding the medical records that document the connection between the scope and the infection.
The outbreaks below are documented in U.S. Senate findings, peer-reviewed studies, FDA records, and contemporaneous news reporting. They are not the only incidents — only the ones that became public record. Many smaller outbreaks were resolved quietly between hospitals and patients, and many individual infections were never connected back to a contaminated scope at all.
Virginia Mason Medical Center (Seattle, Washington)
Virginia Mason is the most thoroughly documented Olympus scope outbreak in U.S. history. Between 2012 and 2014, the hospital identified 32 patients infected with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and an additional 7 patients infected with E. coli. The infections were tied to ERCP procedures performed with Olympus TJF-Q180V duodenoscopes. At least 18 of the infected patients later died, and one of the families — the family of Richard Bigler, who died in August 2013 — brought one of the first major U.S. lawsuits tied to the outbreak.
The Virginia Mason outbreak is significant beyond its death toll. The hospital's epidemiology team documented that the contamination persisted even after cleaning the scopes according to Olympus's reprocessing instructions, which made the case study a foundational piece of evidence in later litigation and in the FDA's eventual 2025 import alert.
UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center (Los Angeles, California)
On February 18, 2015, UCLA Health publicly notified 179 patients that they may have been exposed to CRE during complex endoscopic procedures performed at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center between October 3, 2014 and January 28, 2015. Seven of those patients were ultimately identified as infected, and two died.
The UCLA notification was a turning point in public awareness. It came with national news coverage, and it triggered the first wave of federal congressional inquiry that eventually produced the U.S. Senate HELP Committee report described below.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles, California)
In March 2015, less than a month after the UCLA notification, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center disclosed its own CRE outbreak tied to an Olympus duodenoscope. Four patients had been infected from a single contaminated scope, and an additional 67 patients were notified that they may have been exposed. The scope had been cleaned according to the manufacturer's published instructions.
Hartford Hospital (Hartford, Connecticut)
Hartford Hospital disclosed in 2014 that it had identified at least 5 confirmed bacterial infections tied to an Olympus duodenoscope, with more than 280 patients potentially exposed across procedures going back several years. The hospital began contacting patients individually to recommend bacterial testing.
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital (Park Ridge, Illinois) & UPMC Presbyterian (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's January 2016 report — "Preventable Tragedies: Superbugs and How Ineffective Monitoring of Medical Device Safety Fails Patients" — identified Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in suburban Chicago and UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh as among the hospitals where Olympus duodenoscope-related outbreaks had occurred. The Senate investigation concluded that, between 2012 and the spring of 2015, at least 25 separate outbreak incidents had affected approximately 250 patients worldwide, with the United States carrying a substantial share of the documented cases.
The Senate report is the single most important historical document in this entire story. It established the regulatory and congressional record that the FDA's later actions — including the June 2025 import alert and the 2026 wave of recalls covered in our June 2026 litigation update — built on.
The 2024-2026 Picture
The post-2024 record is less granular at the hospital level but more comprehensive at the device level. The FDA's adverse event database (MAUDE) shows continued infection reports tied to Olympus duodenoscopes. Olympus's own October 2025 urgent field safety notice acknowledged that, since 2024, the company has received two reports of patient deaths and five reports of serious patient injuries tied to infection or positive cultures involving its TJF-Q180V, TJF-Q190V, TJF-Q290V, and TJF-Q170V duodenoscope models.
Individual U.S. hospital outbreak disclosures have become less common since 2020. That does not necessarily mean fewer outbreaks — some of it reflects post-pandemic shifts in infection-control reporting and a hospital-industry preference for handling individual cases without public notification. The FDA's MAUDE database remains the most reliable single source for device-linked adverse event reports, and our ERCP scope infections page walks through how to read it.
What This List Does (and Doesn't) Tell You
A hospital appearing on this list does not mean every patient who had an endoscopy there contracted an infection. The outbreaks above involved specific time windows, specific scope units, and specific bacterial strains. Conversely, a hospital not on this list does not mean it was outbreak-free — only that it did not make the public record. The list is a starting point for inquiry, not a final verdict on any particular institution.
The list also pre-dates the entire 2025-2026 regulatory cycle — the FDA import alert, the OER-Pro reprocessor recall, the high flow insufflation unit recall, the Olympus urgent field safety notice. That cycle suggests the underlying contamination story has not been fully resolved, even if individual hospital outbreaks are now less publicly reported.
If You're Trying to Figure Out Whether Your Hospital Was Affected
A few practical steps:
- Request your procedure record. Federal HIPAA right-of-access rules entitle you to the procedure note, the device identifier (UDI), and the infection workup from any hospital that treated you. Our step-by-step records request guide covers exactly what to ask for.
- Check whether the hospital made a public infection-control disclosure during the time window of your procedure. State health departments and hospital newsroom archives are usually searchable for these notices.
- Identify the bacteria, if your infection workup did culture. CRE, ESBL E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii are the documented pathogens in scope-related outbreaks. The superbug pathogens guide walks through which is which.
- Compare against the symptom timeline. Most scope-related infections present within days to a few weeks after the procedure. The infection symptoms guide covers the warning signs.
If You Think You May Have Been Affected
We represent patients nationwide, regardless of where the procedure happened. A free case review takes about 15 minutes by phone, and we evaluate the medical timeline, the device involved, and your state's filing deadlines before you decide whether to move forward.
- See if your situation fits the case profile with our 3-part qualification test.
- Review the latest litigation status: June 2026 Olympus Lawsuit Update.
- Learn how filing deadlines work and why the discovery rule matters: How Long Do I Have to File?
Free case review. No Fees Unless We Recover Money for You.
Sources
- U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — "Preventable Tragedies: Superbugs and How Ineffective Monitoring of Medical Device Safety Fails Patients" (January 2016 minority report). help.senate.gov
- Healio Gastroenterology — "Senate report pins ERCP scope-related 'superbug' outbreaks on FDA, manufacturers, hospitals" (January 2016). healio.com
- Outpatient Surgery Magazine — "Inside the Deadly Duodenoscope Outbreaks" (May 2015 special report covering Virginia Mason, UCLA, and Cedars-Sinai). outpatientsurgery.net
- Drugwatch — "Olympus Superbug Scope Potentially Infects Hundreds, Kills Two" (UCLA outbreak coverage). drugwatch.com
- U.S. FDA — MAUDE Adverse Event Database, search interface for Olympus duodenoscope models. accessdata.fda.gov
- U.S. FDA — "Import Alerts for Certain Olympus Medical Devices Manufactured in Japan: Letter to Health Care Providers" (June 2025). fda.gov
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) guidance and outbreak reporting. cdc.gov
- MassDevice — coverage of Bigler v. Olympus and subsequent Virginia Mason litigation. massdevice.com
- National Library of Medicine / PMC — "Tolerance of biofilm of a carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae involved in a duodenoscopy-associated outbreak to the disinfectant used in reprocessing." ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Think You May Have a Case?
The 3-part qualification test takes 2 minutes. If it fits your situation, a free case review is the next step. No Fees Unless We Recover Money for You.