Failing Hip Implants Threaten to Increase Healthcare Costs in U.S.: Report

A U.S. law firm, Ennis and Ennis, P.A., says failed metal-on-metal hip implants may have cost billions of dollars in loss for Americans.

The company, which wants to play a role in getting compensation for the victims of implant, has cited a recent report on New York Times to make its case.

The Times report, drawn on data from Australia’s orthopedic registry, says the failure of implants would have had a significant impact on American patients because many of the new designs, like so-called metal-on-metal hips, were widely used here.

Those implants, which have both a ball and cup made of metal, are expected to fail prematurely in tens of thousands of patients rather than lasting 15 years or more as artificial joints are supposed to do, the paper said.

“This is not new information to me because for quite some time now, I have received a high volume of complaints from potential clients who are devastated because their metal-on-metal implant only lasted several years when they are supposed to last approximately 15 years,” stated attorney David Ennis of Ennis & Ennis, P.A.

The primary culprit of the hip failure is metal wear. The wear of metal parts against each other generates debris that is damaging tissue and, in some cases, crippling patients.

All-metal implants accounted for nearly one-third of the estimated 250,000 hip replacements performed each year in the United States, according to an August 2011 New York Times article.

According to one estimate, some 500,000 patients have already received an all-metal replacement hip.

According to its release, in September 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) received more than 5,000 adverse events reports in the first six months of 2011 regarding all-metal hips, which was more than the agency had received in the prior four years combined.

“Even when I was involved with the Sulzer Orthopedics settlement about 10 years ago, the number of affected patients was not nearly as high as it is now with all of the metal-on-metal hip claims,” commented Ennis. “This is just a travesty for thousands of patients.”

Ennis & Ennis is offering free and confidential consultations to anyone who has a metal-on-metal hip replacement system.