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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