subject: More Depuy Asr Lawsuits Filed Despite Recall [print this page] Lawsuits against the DePuy Orthopaedic IncLawsuits against the DePuy Orthopaedic Inc. continue to pile up allegedly for the manufacturer"s defective metal-on-metal Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip systems. The latest lawsuit which is seeking more than $75,000 in damages allegedly for DePuy"s negligence was filed by Michael Schaff in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. The lawsuits that were filed ahead of Schaff"s were consolidated into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) under Judge David A. Katz of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio who called for a status conference of the DePuy hip replacement lawsuit this month.
Filed last Oct. 11, 2011, Schaff"s case claimed that he had suffered injuries which resulted from a faulty DePuy ASR hip replacement system. Schaff underwent a hip replacement surgery in November of 2009 and required a revision surgery in February 2011, just less than two years later. Schaff claimed that he had suffered severe and permanent injuries both externally and internally because of the implant.
Because of Depuy"s "careless and negligent acts," including improperly designing and fraudulently marketing the implant as safe and effective, Schaff suffered "great pain and anguish, both in mind and body, and will in the future continue to suffer," the lawsuit further alleged. As a preliminary step to transferring the case to the pending MDL in the Northern District of Ohio under Judge Katz, Schaff"s lawsuit has been removed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Several orthopedic specialists said that they believed that the design of the ASR Cup, which is shallower than some similar devices, was at the heart of the implant"s problems, according to an article published in the "New York Times." With the idea of allowing patients a wider range of motion, DePuy had designed a shallower cup and removed the plastic liner from the inside of the implant. However, the friction of the ball portion of the hip implant against the socket wears away cobalt and chromium particles from the device and into the soft tissue around the area leading to several problems, one of them metallosis.
The problem, however, does not only pertain to the DePuy hip replacement recall alone but to metal-on-metal hip implants in general. This as proven by the thousands of complaints received by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this year alone. DePuy may have accounted for 75 percent of the complaints; other metal-on-metal hip implant manufacturers were involved in some.
Ordered by the FDA for post-market surveillance studies last May 2011 were 21 manufacturers of metal-on-metal hip systems, including DePuy Orthopaedics, Stryker, Zimmer, Biomet and Wright Medical Technology. With this, companies are required to provide additional studies regarding the possible adverse health consequences of the implants. Unfortunately, these studies will not be complete for at least five years.
