Mesothelioma Legal Advice

If you’re over the age of 60, it’s very likely that either you or someone you love has had a hip replacement. These operations, around for almost 40 years, have become increasingly more common as seniors live longer, and want to live healthy and active lives.

As we age, our hip joints often wear out. In the past, this has led to pain and inactivity, especially among younger sufferers. Hip replacements help, but need to be replaced themselves every ten years. The Zimmer hip implant was supposed to change all that, not needing to be replaced. Unfortunately, this claim has not held up. Because of this, there is a large and far reaching hip recall.

For some older Americans, a hip replacement, like those which are a part of the hip recall, can be the perfect solution to their pain and mobility issues. As we get older, body parts that have served us faithfully begin to wear and break down from use. For many, this leads to pain that is manageable. But for some, the pain can be unbearable. Why is this an issue? Because in the last fifty years, Americans have made incredible gains in their lifespan. Because of this, parts of our body that worked great for sixty years are being pushed far beyond that point.

The hip recall is being caused by a device, manufactured by the Zimmer Durom company, that does not work in the way that it was promised. The Zimmer device was marketed to those needing a hip replacement at a younger age than is standard, in their late 50’s or early 60’s. With a traditional hip replacement, the device must be replaced every ten years, on average. For a younger patient, this can mean several difficult follow up surgeries. This device was therefore marketed with the promise that it would last a lifetime, without the need for replacement.

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.

These claims were actually false. At a clinic where many of the devices were installed, a doctor noted that twelve percent of patients who received the Zimmer Durom implant needed to have them surgically replaced within two years. This number is much higher than it should be given their claims of longevity, and it much higher than that of even a traditional implant. The discrepancy led to calls for a hip recall. Zimmer Durom claimed that the high failure rates at the clinic were caused by doctor error, but in fact, in their own internal study, seven percent of the devices failed within two years. Because of this high number, the company pulled the hip replacement device in July 2008.

If you or someone you know received a hip replacement before July 2008, contact your doctor immediately to ensure that it is not a part of the hip recall. If it is, consult with your doctor about your health, and the longevity of your hip replacement, immediately. Even if the replacement does not need to be removed immediately, you may also qualify to take part in a class action lawsuit against Zimmer Durom.

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.

As we age, our bodies don’t operate the way that they used to. Every day it’s just a little harder to get out of bed, and there are new aches and pains to behold. But for some of us, the pain is deeper than that. Joint pain and deterioration can be debilitating to the point that it robs us of our ability to walk and care for ourselves. As we live longer and more active lives, joints which weren’t meant to take 60 or 70 years of heavy use start to wear out.

If you’ve ever had joint pain bad enough for the need or a replacement, you know how difficult it can be to have so much pain that even walking within your own home can become impossible. This is why artificial replacements for knee and hip joints were invented. If you have had a hip replaced, keep reading for more information on the Durom implant recall.

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.

When you have led an active lifestyle, at a certain point, your joints stop working correctly. As we have made advances in health and technology that have led to longer and longer life spans, we are beginning to see the limit on how long natural human body parts can last. One of the first parts of a body to fail under the stress of a longer and more active life style is the hip joint. If you are in your 70’s, a hip replacement can be a great way to get more years of activity. But because hip replacements often fail within 10 years, someone who is in their 50’s and 60’s faces one or more further surgeries to replace their replacement. This is why the Durom implant was invented.

The need for replacement of the first hip replacement was the reasoning behind the Durom implant, and how it was marketed to doctors. While a standard hip replacement will begin to wear and need to be replaced within ten years, the Durom implant was supposedly designed with the younger patient in mind to be long lasting even under an active lifestyle. This would mean that instead of facing the prospect of two or more surgeries related to their hip, a younger patient could have only one replacement surgery, and use the same hip replacement implant for life. As a younger patient, this was sure to sound like the ideal solution.

This promise unfortunately did not hold true, however. In one clinic where the Durom implants were tested, twelve percent of patients needed to have their replacements replaced within two years. This is an amazingly high failure rate that is much worse than that of a standard hip replacement, and is no where near the claim that the Zimmer Durom company had made. The company claimed that this high failure rate was due to surgeon error, but in their own testing, under ideal conditions, the replacement rate within two years was seven percent, which is unacceptably high.

Because of the high failure rate of the Durom implant, a class action law suit is being considered for those with failed implants, or for those who have this type of implant which has not yet failed. If you or a loved one has received a hip implant before July 2008, contact your doctor.

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.

Related External Posts

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