Mesothelioma Legal Advice

As Americans start living longer lives, some of our parts aren’t lasting quite as long as our lives. Because of this, many people are having replacements for different parts of their bodies needed surgically. Of course you’ve heard of hip and knee replacements, it’s possible that you’ve had one, or someone that you love has. While this surgery has become very commonplace, especially as active adults are hit by arthritis or overuse, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t without its complications. If you have received a hip replacement, please read on to find out important information about faulty Zimmer Durom hip cups.

If you’re an older American, it’s likely that you or someone that you know has needed a hip replacement. These surgeries, many of which involved the Zimmer Durom hip cup, are often seen as a way for otherwise healthy and active seniors to live longer, healthier lives, doing what they love to do. Normal wear and tear can lead to joint pain severe enough that hip replacement surgery is recommended. Chronic conditions such as arthritis also often lead to hip replacement, as do falls which lead to broken hips which have caused joint damage.

Hip replacement surgery involves the removal of the femur and hip joint. They are then replaced with artificial parts that are designed to allow for normal and healthy movement. Unfortunately, with older technology, these replacements often needed to be replaced themselves, leading to expensive and difficult repeat surgeries. The promise of the Zimmer Durom hip cup was that it would allow younger hip replacement recipients to use one replacement for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, this has not been true.

The Zimmer Durom Hip Cup, marketed as a solution to the wear and tear that can happen to a hip replacement, is actually very prone to needing replacement itself. At one hospital, fully 12 percent of those who received these replacements needed another surgery to replace the Durom hip cup within two years, a staggering amount, especially when the hip replacement is supposed to last for a lifetime. A doctor at the hospital complained to the Zimmer Durom company, and was told the issue was with ’surgeon error.’

Zimmer holdings has released a recall of their Zimmer Durom cup hip implant.  There are Zimmer hip lawsuits pending in multiple states across the US.  If you or a loved on has been subject to a Zimmer Durom implant, then you may want to contact a Zimmer Hip Lawyer to see if you have a case.

But in fact, this does not seem to be the case at all. When the company did their own evaluation of the Zimmer Durom hip cup, they found that eight percent needed to be replaced within two years. This is not what they promised in their marketing literature, and not the outcome that either patients or doctors wanted or expected. Because this was promised as a solution that avoided surgery, not added more, the faulty nature of the implants is leading to a class action law suit.

If you or a loved one have received a hip replacement, now is the time to ask your doctor if it involved the Zimmer Durom hip cup. If it did, you may have the right to sue, even if your replacement has not yet failed. Ask your doctor today.

Stockholders, doctors, patients, and attorneys are still debating the handling of the sale of Zimmer Durom Cup hip implants in the United States. Although these devices were used successfully in Europe for three years prior to being approved in the U.S., their track record in America has been less than stellar. Many contend that the company was slow to respond to the problems that were occurring and negligent in informing the public about what was going on. Many feel that a recall should have been issued on the defective cups, but Zimmer has not done so.

Even though Zimmer knew about the problem as early as January, 2008, it wasn’t until July of that same year that they finally suspended American sales of the device. They chose to spend the interim time looking into the allegations instead of eliminating the problem. They were skeptical that the implants could be defective as doctors were saying, because they had been used so successfully in Europe. Since they felt they needed to look elsewhere for the problem, they didn’t want to take the devices off the market until they were sure what the culprit was.

Using information taken from 3,100 implant surgeries, Zimmer put together a database of material so that their researchers could study the problem in detail. After a great deal of study, they determined that there was nothing wrong with the implant technology. What they found was that American doctors hadn’t received adequate training prior to starting to perform the surgeries. The implants had been designed differently from previous types of hip replacement devices, and surgeons needed to be much more precise about the way they implanted them than they’d ever needed to be before.

Since there was no evidence found saying that the implant device itself was to blame for the problems patients were having, no recall was ever issued. This leaves the way clear for them to put the implant back on the market once efficient methods of training are developed for doctors. Zimmer needed to develop a better way of teaching physicians the very precise skills required to do the hip replacement using the Durom Cup successfully.

Part of the problem resulting in the public demand for recall is that no follow-up procedures were put in place by Zimmer in order to track the progress of patients using their implants. Some may argue that it isn’t their job to police the product after it has been implanted, but others feel that if they made it, they should continue to be responsible for its performance.

Physicians clearly blame the device for the problems that are popping up. They point to the fact that a knee replacement device manufactured by Zimmer is still being used in the United States even though Austrian doctors stopped using it just three years after it was introduced because it failed in almost 40% of the cases in which it had been used. It’s easy to understand why doctors are feeling uneasy about using Zimmer products despite their previous reputation.

Zimmer holdings has released a recall of their Zimmer Durom cup hip implant.  There are Zimmer hip lawsuits pending in multiple states across the US.  If you or a loved on has been subject to a Zimmer Durom implant, then you may want to contact a Zimmer Hip Lawyer to see if you have a case.

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Zimmer Holdings, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of orthopedic devices, introduced its Durom Cup Hip Implant in 2003 in Europe. Three years later, in 2006, it was approved for use in the United States. From the onset, however, U.S. procedures were plagued with problems. Within the first two years of its use, 12,000 of the devices were implanted, and within a few months, many of them began to fail. In an attempt to explain the numerous surgical failures, doctors finally that the Durom Cup is a defective product.

Patients who suffer from the use of defective prosthetic devices are protected by law in most U.S. states. These laws entitle a patient who experienced pain, incurred medical expenses, or lost wages due to a defect in a medical device to receive compensation for their losses. Zimmer has not yet conceded that their product is defective because of its success rate in the European market, but in order to give itself time to develop a better training program for American surgeons, Zimmer voluntarily pulled the cup from the American market in July, 2008.

If you perform a search on the Internet for “Zimmer Durom Cup Lawsuits”, you will find a host of attorneys who are looking to help file lawsuits against Zimmer on behalf of patients. As the number of cases of implant failures continues to grow, these attorneys have done their research and believe that they can file successful individual or class action lawsuits against the manufacturer.

Zimmer holdings has released a recall of their Zimmer Durom cup hip implant.  There are Zimmer hip lawsuits pending in multiple states across the US.  If you or a loved on has been subject to a Zimmer Durom implant, then you may want to contact a Zimmer Hip Lawyer to see if you have a case.

Doctors who have done further surgery to determine the cause of patient discomfort have found that the cups have loosened over time to the point where they just pop from the sockets at the slightest touch. Other patients have devices which have actually migrated a short distance in their bodies so they are no longer located exactly where they should be. Although Zimmer contends that the rate of failure of the Durom Cup is quite low, physicians believe that hundreds of them will fail and need revision within the next few years.

Zimmer stockholders take the position that Zimmer should have announced a suspension of U.S. sales before January 22, 2008 instead of waiting until July. Because of this belief, they have filed a class action lawsuit in Indiana requesting damages for those investors who purchased stock between January 22 and July, 2008 when the product was finally pulled from the market.

Zimmer still pleads its case that its Durom Cup is not to blame for the surgical failures in the United States. Instead they contend that physicians did not receive adequate training for doing the procedure. Even so, in October, 2008, Zimmer announced that it had reserved $47.5 million to pay claims won in lawsuits against it. In July it was shown that the failure rate of cup implants could be as high as 5.7%. Zimmer states that this money is not being reserved for all patients and revisions but only for “revisions associated with surgeries that predate the company’s voluntary suspension and which also occur within two years of the original surgery date.” The resolution of this problem remains to be seen.

The Zimmer Durom Cup Replacement component was used in over 12,000 hip replacement surgeries in the United States from its approval in 2006 through July, 2008. These devices are made of only one piece of material, and their design differs radically from the 3-part implants which were their predecessors. During the period of time from 2003 to 2006, hundreds of implant surgeries were successfully performed in Europe, and American physicians were impressed. Unfortunately, as many American patients started having problems with their implants, doctors lost their faith in them.

Patients started complaining of pain in their hips. Although there is some pain to be expected for the first few months after hip replacement surgery, Durom Cup recipients were starting to complain of problems well after the three-month recovery period. Doctors are now convinced that revision surgery will be needed in almost 5.7% of the patients who received the transplants prior to July, 2008.

After studying the problems from January through July, 2008, Zimmer finally pulled the Durom Cup Replacement device from American markets. After devising a new Internet training program for surgeons, the cup was reintroduced in August, 2008. Only doctors who complete the online training are now able to do the implant surgeries, because the extra training was designed to drastically cut down on the number of revisions that will need to be done. About half of all doctors have refused so far to take the training. They no longer have enough faith in the Zimmer product to go to any extra work in order to use it.

A lot of the unhappy patients who have experienced pain and suffering due to the loosening of their Durom Cup Replacements have filed lawsuits against the company. In addition, a group of stockholders in Indiana filed a class action suit stating that the company was negligent in informing investors about the problems in a timely manner. Even though the company did a lot of testing on the product and found no defects, they announced that they had set aside $47.5 million to pay these claims. They do admit that they were at fault for not offering adequate training to physicians who were using their product.

Patients who are experiencing unexplained hip pain more than three months after having hip replacement surgery, have loosening and slippage in their artificial hip implant, or require hip replacement revision surgery are being encouraged by product liability attorneys to file suit against the company. Per the laws in most states, patients are entitled to compensation for their pain and suffering, medical expenses, and lost wages due to defects in the Zimmer Durom Cup Replacements they received prior to July, 2008.

Zimmer holdings has released a recall of their Zimmer Durom cup hip implant.  There are Zimmer hip lawsuits pending in multiple states across the US.  If you or a loved on has been subject to a Zimmer Durom implant, then you may want to contact a Zimmer Hip Lawyer to see if you have a case.

Since it was reintroduced to the American market in August, 2008, the Durom Cup Replacement device is again being used by about half of the physicians who used to perform the implants. While it is much too soon to know the success rate of these surgeries, the doctors who have performed them are confident that the new training they received will make a big difference. Other doctors are still skeptical and reluctant to take the risk of trying to use the cups again. If you are a candidate for hip replacement surgery, you’ll need to read the information that’s available and make your own decisions. Keep in mind, though, that even with a 5.7% failure rate, Durom Cup surgeries were still successful 94.3% of the time.

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In 2006 Zimmer Holdings, the world’s largest manufacturer of orthopedic devices, introduced the Zimmer Durom Cup Hip Implant in the United States. Since that time, thousands of implants have been surgically inserted into American patients. The device had been used successfully in Europe since 2003 before being tried in the U.S. Unfortunately, its road to success has been far bumpier in the U.S. than it has been in Europe, and U.S. sales have been put on hold.

Physicians who performed the unsuccessful surgeries claim that the Zimmer Cup is a defective piece of equipment. Zimmer counters with the fact that it has been so successful in Europe and contends that the surgeons must be at fault. They do agree, however, that surgeons have not had access to adequate training in the correct procedures to use when performing the implant and that this lack of training has been instrumental in the failure of the replacement surgeries. With this fact in mind, Zimmer voluntarily suspended U.S. implant sales until a method of training surgeons is in place. Sadly, some surgeons are still blaming the device itself and are unwilling to perform more implant surgeries no matter what kind of training they are offered.

Zimmer holdings has released a recall of their Zimmer Durom cup hip implant.  There are Zimmer hip lawsuits pending in multiple states across the US.  If you or a loved on has been subject to a Zimmer Durom implant, then you may want to contact a Zimmer Hip Lawyer to see if you have a case.

Under the laws of most states, patients who suffer from the effects of defective orthopedic devices are entitled to compensation if the device doesn’t perform as expected. These laws state that patients can be compensated for pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages if it is the device that is at fault. So, the battle goes on with Zimmer claiming there is nothing wrong with the design of the Durom Cup and with physicians blaming the device for the failed surgeries.

Hip replacement surgeries aren’t a new idea. In fact, as early as 1891 there is written reference to attempts to replace the femoral head using ivory devices. It wasn’t until 1960, however, that the Burmese surgeon, Dr. San Baw, started replacing broken hip bones with ivory. Within the next 20 years Dr. Baw claimed a success rate of 88% on the more than 300 replacement surgeries that he performed.

Modern hip replacement devices owe their origin to John Charnley who pioneered a 3-part artificial hip joint. Developed in the 1970s, this device or an adaptation of it was used all over the world for over 20 years. Then, in 2003, Zimmer introduced the Durom Cup which was touted as the best hip replacement device ever created during its initial try-outs in Europe.

There has been a vast improvement in both hip replacement devices and the surgical methods used to implant them in the years since the first procedures were performed, but the operation still has its problems. The most common problem patients with a Zimmer Durom Cup implant have is in the implant slipping. This occurs due to the fact that the implant is built smaller than the patient’s original bones, and if it isn’t inserted correctly, it can move around. In addition, the implant can sometimes loosen and infections can occur. In spite of the risks involved with this surgery, physicians still prefer that the patients who have serious problems with their hip joints undergo the procedure.

Zimmer can only hope to win the lawsuits that have been filed against it and be able to market their Durom Cup more successfully in the U.S. in the future. They still believe that their device can make a positive difference in the lives of many people if used correctly.

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