DePuy Hip Recall Lawsuits Filed Across the Country

Since the recall of the DePuy ASR XL Acetabular Metal-on-Metal hip replacement system in August of last year, lawsuits have been filed throughout the United States by patients who have suffered some of the side effects associated with the device. Most recently, on April 14th, five new cases were filed in Houston, Texas. The plaintiffs in these suits – Juan and Helen Campo, Elizabeth and Charles Gorbett, Thomas and Melanie Neal, Richard Boyd, and Patricia Taylor – have all experienced DePuy hip complications.
A study has shown that almost 50 percent of patients could expect to see serious complications and failure associated with their defective DePuy hip implant within six years, with issues such as component loosening or misalignment, hip implant dislocation, infection, bone fracture, and metal poisoning causing pain and difficulty for many patients across the country. A significant number of these patients have become plaintiffs in the ongoing DePuy lawsuit, with the most recent plaintiffs’ lawyer calling the number of lawsuits “staggering”.
Most plaintiffs in DePuy cases have either already undergone or will undergo hip revision surgery, a procedure that will replace the device with one less prone to failure. Not only is the surgery more complicated than the initial hip implant surgery, it poses additional dangers to the plaintiff – surgeons have to work around scar tissue and other damage caused by the first surgery or the implant itself, and recovery time can be much more drawn-out and painful.
The recall was issued due to the massive number of side effects that were being experienced by patients, and over 35,000 DePuy ASR devices are in circulation in the United States. Lately estimates are predicting that about one out of every eight DePuy ASR patients will have to undergo hip revision surgery, and many more will experience less serious side effects, which are still painful and have an impact on quality of life.