DePuy ASR Hip Implants Recall

The symptoms being experienced by patients that had received DePuy hip implants were caused by serious issues with the design of the product. These implants were becoming loose where it interconnected with the bone in a percentage of patients, which resulted in sometimes severe pain. Additionally, if these implants became dislocated or fractured, allowing the ball and socket components of the implant to rub against each other in unintended ways, the components in the implants would become damaged over time. This contact would wear metal particles from the surfaces of the implant parts where the friction occurred and released them into the surrounding tissue. The metal particles in turn would often cause immune system reactions in the affected patients, resulting in fluid build up localized around the muscles and joints, initially causing swelling and pain, and over time often resulting in damage to nerve, muscle, joint, and bone tissues around the hip implant.

DePuy Orthopedics own website states that approximately one out of every eight patients who underwent surgery involving the DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System or the ASR™ XL Acetabular System would require a second surgery to repair the damage and in many cases involving the ASR™ XL Acetabular System, which was a full hip replacement product, replace the hip implant with a different type of artificial hip. These type of surgeries were extremely invasive, and due to the fact that they were typically performed on elderly patients carry a high risk of complications up to and including the death of the patient. And even when the surgery was completely successful, the recovery process would be long, difficult, and painful for the patients.

It should be noted that the DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System was never approved for use in the United States, and was mostly utilized abroad, while the DePuy ASR™ XL Acetabular System product line was marketed worldwide, including within the United States.