DePuy Hip Recall

In May 2011 different engineers and medical experts created a registry tasked to track hip and knee implants, after the issuance of DePuy hip replacement recall.The group was named American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR). In relation to this, US senators recently proposed a bill concerning medical products with safety issues, Bloomberg reports.

“The goal is to track the more than 700,000 total hip and knee replacement surgeries that take place in the U.S. each year and, over time, record which implants failed prematurely, requiring revision surgery to fix the original operation,” explains AJRR chairman David Lewallen, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

An article about the risks of metal-on-metal hip replacement surgeries was earlier published on the New York Times. The article entitled “Remedy Is Elusive as Metallic Hips Fail at Fast Rate” presents how the operation injures the tissue in the hip area.

A medical expert, who commented on the Times report, says that “as surgeons here sliced through tissue surrounding a failed artificial hip in a 53-year-old man, they discovered what looked like a biological dead zone. There were matted strands of tissue stained gray and black; a large strip of muscle near the hip no longer contracted.”

In the case of DePuy hip models, around 93,000 patients received the ASR XL Acetabular System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System worldwide. Following the release of data showing defectiveness in one out of eight patients to whom they were implanted, the two device models were pulled back.

Those who receive hip replacements may suffer from implant failure, metallosis, tissue damage, bone loss and other hip replacement problems, experts say.

Moreover, included in the symptoms of a faulty hip product are pain-bearing weight, pain when rising from a seated position, swelling, pain while walking, pain on the hip area, and pain on the thigh or groin area.

The DePuy hip recall was meant to urge the manufacturer to take an action on the citizens’ need for safe health care services and products, legal observers say.Furthermore, as DePuy lawsuit and claims for compensation are piling up globally, the company is expected to pay attention to the hip replacement failures that are being experienced by its patients. It should circulate a wide range of information regarding malfunctioning hip replacement symptoms so that patrons would be provided with due medical attention, legal experts say.

References:

• businessweek.com/news/2011-05-03/medical-groups-tracking-hip-knee-implants-after-j-j-recall.html

• usrecallnews.com/2010/09/depuy-hip-replacement-recalled-asr-artificial-hip-systems.html

• nytimes.com/2010/08/27/business/27hip.html

• tga.gov.au/newsroom/btn-dupuy-recall.htm