implant under skin
DePuy Had Idea of Hip Replacement Issues Long Before It Announced the Recall
In the United States, approximately 250,000 hip replacement procedures are performed every year. Only 1-3 percent of those procedures will require corrective surgery. A small percentage like this should facilitate the identification and tracking of defective hip replacements by regulators. However, the U.S. does not have a nationally artificial joint registration system in place. This lack of a regulatory system along with the prolonged amount of time it takes for a hip replacement to malfunction has allowed DePuy to sell 93,000 hip replacements worldwide unregulated. As a result, the current DePuy hip replacement recall has affected thousands of patients.
Australia and the United Kingdom were able to immediately detect the presence of defective hip implants because they were fortunate enough to have artificial joint registries in place. The National Joint Registry in Australia reported the DePuy hip replacements as having higher than normal failure rates as early as 2007. DePuy then voluntarily withdrew its products from their market by 2009. Similarly, the National Joint Registry of England and Wales was also effective in the early discovery of defective hip replacements. A study performed by English researchers at Oxford University showed that 3.4 percent of patients out of 660 who received DePuy metal hip implants experienced signs and symptoms associated with metallosis. In comparison, a group of 155 patients who received a competing manufacturer’s hip devices were examined and found to not have experienced similar side effects.
Coincidentally, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was busy processing the several hundred complaints due to the metal-on-metal implants, but did nothing in the absence of a regulatory national registry. Many surgeons have also come forth, claiming that they alerted DePuy as to the complications caused by their implants early on, but received little to no response from the company. Finally in 2010, the media began creating public awareness as to the dangers of DePuy’s defective hip replacements.Public outcry in 2010 from media reports about the high failure rates of the DePuy implants along with pressure from the FDA finally forced DePuy to initiate a recall in August of 2010.
DePuy was aware of its defective products and avoided initiating a recall. It is apparently clear that the company disregarded the health and safety of the consumer in order to avoid having more defective products undergo a public recall. Patients that have received defective hip replacements and want proper compensation for their injuries should contact an experienced attorney handling these types of cases. Details regarding ongoing litigation can be found on the DePuy hip replacement recall website.
A microchip implant is an identifying integrated circuit placed under the skin 4-4
