The
DePuy metal-on-metal hip implant, approved by the FDA a mere seven years
ago—has been inundated with over 8,000 lawsuits claiming the implant is
inherently defective and can lead to costly and painful revision surgery as
well as a myriad of other serious health issues. DePuy initially claimed the
failure rate of the ASR metal hip implant to be between 4-5%. When DePuy
voluntarily recalled the implant in 2010, they upgraded the failure rate to
approximately 12% within the first five years. Studies independent of DePuy or
Johnson & Johnson place the failure rate of the ASR metal implant at 50%
within six years and 80% within eight years. These staggering numbers almost
guarantee that this particular metal-on-metal hip implant will fail at some
point in the majority of recipients.
Nearly
a hundred thousand ASR devices were implanted worldwide prior to the recall
with nearly forty thousand in the United States alone. The propensity of the
implant to loosen and detach as well as the thousands of reports regarding
adverse health effects from high levels of chromium and cobalt have led to over
6,000 lawsuits filed in federal court an another 2,000 filed at the state level
in Maryland, California, Nevada and other states. Johnson & Johnson
recently settled three Nevada cases for $600,000—an amount considered to be at
the low end of the expected $200,000-$500,000 to settle each case.
These
three lawsuits were expected to go to trial in late 2012 and came from three
women, all over the age of sixty, whose surgeries were performed by the same
surgeon. Each woman had no choice but to undergo revision surgery—a procedure
which is not only extremely painful, but can require months of recuperation and
time away from work. One of the women reported excessive amounts of damage to
the surrounding hip bone as a direct result of the implant yet Johnson &
Johnson countered that the implants were not responsible for any of the
developing life-threatening illnesses. The research regarding the potential of
chromium and cobalt in the bloodstream to cause serious and life-threatening
illnesses is sadly lacking at this point in time.
