Steps of Progress for Quicker Joint Recalls


Multiple joint implant recalls have been issued in recent years, including DePuy Orthopaedics, Trident PSL and Hemispherical Acetabular, and Zimmer Holdings.(NOTE: currently there is a DePuy ASR hip recall) In many cases, it takes years of patient complaints for failing implants before a recall is even issues, harming both patients and companies. So what is the United States doing to ensure these long recalls don’t happen in the future?

Some experts have suggested the idea of a national joint registry while some states have placed new law levies with an excise tax on implant sales in effort to fund itself. Both methods have come under scrutiny.

Medicare officials have refused to assist with a registry citing a lack of resources for data collection and there are questions about initial and long-term funding for such program. The tax has been criticized for its circular reasoning. The additional costs will simply be passed on to consumers, private insurance, and ultimately back to the taxpayers since Medicare pays for roughly half of the joint implants in this country.

As a Maryland DePuy hip recall lawyer, I think the country needs to find a happy medium for ensuring joint implant patient safety and quick recalls of faulty prostheses.

The American Joint Replacement Registry, a non-profit, is working to collect data on joint implants, but unfortunately the data would not be available until 2010. As a personal injury lawyer in Maryland, I’m glad to see someone is doing something about better tracking. The pain and suffering visited on consumers whose hips fail as well as the spiraling costs of those failures could be addressed easily and effectively with a coherent national record-keeping system.