Articles Tagged with Boston DePuy hip lawyer

One of the major manufactures of artificial hip implants is a company that was simply known as DePuy for many years.  Now the company has merged to become DePuy Synthes, and is also now a wholly owned subsidy of the Johnson & Johnson company ,which has become one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and medical device manufactures. While many associate the company with making Band Aids and other consumer health care products, and they certainly do make those things, that is really only a very small part of the company’s business.

Artificial hip implant devices are big business. The companies that make them can charge a lot for the device and with more than 300,000 people getting hip implants in year in the U.S. alone, a figure that is still growing, there is no shortage of patients to purchase them. There is a lot of competition from other medical device giants such as the Stryker Corporation.

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In the past couple of decades, total knee and total hip replacement surgeries have become the two most common surgical procedures in the United States, with more than 600,000 operations and more than 300,000 operations respectively being performed each year.  One of the reasons for the increase in the number of patients having a total joint replacement is that more young people are choosing to undergo procedures.

There are a variety of reasons more young people are choosing to having a total hip or total knee replacement.   In years past, these operations were primarily for the elderly, because, when someone can no longer stay mobile, there tends to be a significant reduction in both quality of life and the years a person will live.  However, a traditional artificial hip is rated to last between 10 and 20 years on the high end, so if they give the implant to a younger person, they will likely need a second or even third operation at some point in their lives. Continue reading

In this heated presidential election season, we are hearing about a lot of healthcare issues in terms of insurance and whether there should be a universal healthcare system or private insurance. One of the issues that is brought up from time to time has to do with the fact that Americans seem to pay more for drugs and medical procedures than people in other countries.

According to a recent news feature from Family Practice News, a trade publication for primary care physicians, having a total knee or total hip replacement surgery in the United States costs more on average than it does in a group of six other countries in the industrial world. The price was higher in the U.S. by a long shot.  For example, the average price of a total hip replacement in the U.S. was $29,000 as compared to the same procedure in Switzerland at just over $20,000, and this was the next most expensive country in the group of six selected as part of the study.  Continue reading

Many people think of getting a total hip replacement operation as something that for the most part, only elderly people have to worry about.  While it is true that some younger people break one or both hips in a catastrophic accident, in years past, it is true that most patients in the United States getting a total hip replacement operation were generally older people.

However, as discussed in a recent news feature from Page Six, Lara Spencer, who is a co-anchor on ABC’s flagship morning program “Good Morning America,” needed a hip replacement at the relatively young age of 47 and decided to talk about her medical issues with the audience. She first told the audience, when she first was told she needed to have the operation, she chose not to do anything or tell anyone.  The reason was that she believed this was an “old person’s problem,” and she couldn’t believe it was happening to her.  Continue reading

In total hip replacement surgery, the deteriorated natural hip joint is cut out and site is prepared to receive the artificial hip joint.  The site must be prepared very precisely so as not to allow for any unnecessary movement of the artificial hip joint.

If the hip joint is not placed exactly as required, it can move from side to side or otherwise rock in place and this can result in device failure.  While the vast majority of surgeons are good at what they do and would never incorrectly implant an artificial hip device, it does happen.  Continue reading

A man’s $8 million damage award for a defective hip has survived an appeal before the 4th District Court of Appeal. The trial was the first of thousands of product liability claims filed over the ASR hip device. 

Plaintiff alleged that the device failed just 5 years after the surgery, despite promises that it was supposed to last most if not all the rest of his lifetime.

The case was Kransky v. DePuy, and expert witnesses, including a biomedical engineer, testified in the case that internal data from the company showed these hips started to deform and change shape in just one year’s worth of walking in the human body. This high rate of deformity was known to those in the company, who ignored this reported “red flag.”  Continue reading