Personal Injury Law

Potential Delay by Johnson and Johnson in issuing DePuy Hip Recall

It has been suggested and argued by plaintiffs in multiple cases involving the DePuy hip recall that the company that manufactured and sold the products was aware of the unusually large number of problems associated with their new product, but failed to act quickly enough in recalling the devices.

Consequently, thousands of people have received faulty hip implants in spite of increasing numbers of problems with hip implants already in place. Compounding the problem was the company?s insistence that there was not an unusually large defect rate.

The implants in question are either the DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System or an ASR XL Acetabular System. The problems that have been associated with the hip stem from a breakdown in the metal of the hip implant. This breakdown has caused issues such as weakness, instability, popping, pain and in worst cases, metallosis.

Metallosis is a condition that is caused by the metal particles that are broken free from the hip implant and released into the bloodstream. Simply put, the metal that comes from the hip implant failure may be released into the blood and can cause severe problems in other bodily organs. When metal is released into the body, organs such as the liver and spleen operate to remove the impurity from your system. However, metal is not something the body can easily accommodate or remove. Long term, high levels of metal in the blood can destroy organs and cause significant health issues.

Full post as published by Tennessee Law Blog on March 07, 2011 (boomark / email).