subject: Delayed Hip Recall Action Gets Scrutiny From Doctors And Lobbyists [print this page] The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration(TGA) faced public blame for taking too long to respond to the hip replacement recall controversy. Thousands of men and women who were implanted with artificial hips are carefully considering which way to go as revision procedures seemed to be the only alternative they had for avoiding pain. In fact, a former gymnast and DePuy advocate filed a lawsuit against the company.
Surgeons and consumers from different regions of Australia slammed the TGAthe Australian counterpart of the US Food and Drug Administrationfor dragging its foot on the defective implants imported into the country by different device makers, says the daily newspaper The Age.
Many people who owned defective hip replacements are reportedly considering to put themselves under the knife in the run up to December because of the high incidence of failures of the artificial devices they are using.
The sufferers who embraced artificial hips last year have disclosed astounding rates of failure of over 10%, which ran twice as much as the normal rate of 4%. They ran into risks that were two times as much as they could bear for correction surgery, says the paper. The faulty metal prosthetics came from 24 brands and models, among them the DePuy ASR that were manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.
As an entity being monitored by Australias federal government, the National Joint Replacement Registry has listed down more or less 2,700 elderly Australians who had troubled hip replacement surgery in 2010, the daily newspaper The Age reported.
Politicians in Australia have organized a task force to evaluate the damning report of hip replacement failures as the Senate prepares to disclose its findings on the controversy.
As early as 2006 the National Joint Replacement Registry noted a 50% rate of failure in metal-on-metal artificial hips implanted to elderly citizens. It described the incidence as higher than normal, reports Australias leading daily newspaper Sydney Morning Herald.
More than half the implants sought for revisions involved products that were already known two years ago as problem-prone, says The Age, citing figures from the National Joint Replacement Registry.
The failure rate in hip replacements was assessed at 4% through 5%. The TGA reported that DePuy hip prosthetics had a failure rate of 10%. Around 80,000 artificial hips and knees are implanted to Australians each year. The DePuy hip replacement recall episode has sparked nationwide demands for stringent surveillance from health insurance providers and consumer lobby groups.
As a metal-on-metal device, various hip replacement system models can go through the typical wear and tear of daily use. On the other hand there is likely danger that may arise from metal toxicity. Hip replacement recall on two artificial hip products of Johnson & Johnson is still being enforced throughout the world.
