Stephanie Sanchez, a 37-year-old woman from Roseville, California, has filed an Ortho Evra lawsuit against Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals. Sanchez claims that she suffered serious birth control patch side effects after using the Ortho Evra patch. She says that the company should have done more to warn users about the side effects of Ortho Evra.

Sanchez had been using the Ortho Evra patch for two months when she began to experience serious birth control patch side effects. “I just had really bad cramping in the left side of my chest, and I went to the emergency room,” she says. Doctors diagnosed Sanchez with a blood clot in her lung, a common Ortho Evra side effect.

Food and Drug Administration clinical trials have shown that compared with the pill, the Ortho Evra patch increases the risk of blood clots by three times and of embolisms by six times. The Ortho Evra patch releases a 60% higher dose of estrogen into the bloodstream than birth control pills. Because estrogen can increase the rate of blood clotting, this in turn increases a woman’s risk of serious birth control patch side effects. Hundreds of birth control patch injuries have been linked with the Ortho Evra patch since it was released in 2002.

In her Ortho Evra lawsuit, Sanchez says that Ortho-McNeil, its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, and the FDA should have warned consumers about the birth control patch side effects posed by Ortho Evra. The lawsuit also claims that the two companies failed to disclose the birth control patch health risks associated with Ortho Evra and falsely claimed that the risk of Ortho Evra side effects was similar to that of the pill.

About 40 to 50 women across the U.S. have filed Ortho Evra lawsuits so far. Despite the growing number of birth control patch deaths and injuries linked with Ortho Evra, Ortho-McNeil has yet to announce an Ortho Evra recall.