Graphite May be Used to Upgrade Safety and Effectiveness of Metal-on-Metal Hip Devices
Posted by Matthew Taylor on Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Under: Health
There are around 93,000 recipients of DePuy’s ASR XL Acetabular System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System worldwide when they were pulled back from the market in August 2010 following the release of data showing defectiveness in one out of eight patients to whom they were implanted. A good news for the makers of metal-on-metal hip products was recently reported. German and American researchers have found a layer of “graphitic carbon” on the head of all-metal hip products, new study shows. The graphite compound maybe helpful in designing safer hip replacement devices.
“Graphite has been used as a lubricant for over a century. It is a classic lubricant, and it appears to form naturally,” explains Laurence Marks. He is one of the study researchers and a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University.
Additionally, metal-on-metal hip replacement manufacturers could develop their product encouraging graphite formation to avoid the corrosion and metal poisoning, he suggests. The benefits of graphite compound was discovered in a recent study funded by the National Institutes of Health that was published in the medical journal, Science.
“Now that we have a handle on how they are working and why they were working well, we can start to design them to make them better,” Marks further explains.
Design problems with metal-on-metal hip implants may have caused the metal components of the DePuy device to rub against each other and shed microscopic metal particles into the body.
• Additional hip replacement or revision surgery
• Loosening of hip device
• Detachment of the hip device from the bone
• Unexplained hip pain
• Hip dislocation
• Swelling
• Complete hip failure
• Metallosis (metal toxicity or blood poisoning)
• Pseudotumors
• Tissue damages
• Genotoxicity (genetic damage)
• Bone fractures
• Bone loss
• Inflammatory reactions
• Presence of chromium and cobalt in the blood that may lead to cancer
“Most major medical centers have seen issues with this device,” based on the newspaper interview with the chairman of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Dr. Joshua J. Jacobs. “This does not come as a surprise.”
Beginning in 2008, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received nearly 400 reports of patients who encountered problems with DePuy hip device. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. and its mother company Johnson & Johnson are currently facing various lawsuits filed by law firms in UK, US and Australia, in behalf of patients who underwent hip replacement operations.These complaints assert that the company postponed the execution of DePuy hip replacement recall even if it knew the risks of using the implants. DePuy should circulate a wide range of information regarding malfunctioning hip replacement symptoms so that its patrons would be provided with due medical attention.
References:
* usrecallnews.com/2010/09/depuy-hip-replacement-recalled-asr-artificial-hip-systems.html
* nytimes.com/2010/08/27/business/27hip.html
* tga.gov.au/newsroom/btn-dupuy-recall.htm
“Graphite has been used as a lubricant for over a century. It is a classic lubricant, and it appears to form naturally,” explains Laurence Marks. He is one of the study researchers and a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University.
Additionally, metal-on-metal hip replacement manufacturers could develop their product encouraging graphite formation to avoid the corrosion and metal poisoning, he suggests. The benefits of graphite compound was discovered in a recent study funded by the National Institutes of Health that was published in the medical journal, Science.
“Now that we have a handle on how they are working and why they were working well, we can start to design them to make them better,” Marks further explains.
Design problems with metal-on-metal hip implants may have caused the metal components of the DePuy device to rub against each other and shed microscopic metal particles into the body.
• Additional hip replacement or revision surgery
• Loosening of hip device
• Detachment of the hip device from the bone
• Unexplained hip pain
• Hip dislocation
• Swelling
• Complete hip failure
• Metallosis (metal toxicity or blood poisoning)
• Pseudotumors
• Tissue damages
• Genotoxicity (genetic damage)
• Bone fractures
• Bone loss
• Inflammatory reactions
• Presence of chromium and cobalt in the blood that may lead to cancer
“Most major medical centers have seen issues with this device,” based on the newspaper interview with the chairman of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Dr. Joshua J. Jacobs. “This does not come as a surprise.”
Beginning in 2008, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received nearly 400 reports of patients who encountered problems with DePuy hip device. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. and its mother company Johnson & Johnson are currently facing various lawsuits filed by law firms in UK, US and Australia, in behalf of patients who underwent hip replacement operations.These complaints assert that the company postponed the execution of DePuy hip replacement recall even if it knew the risks of using the implants. DePuy should circulate a wide range of information regarding malfunctioning hip replacement symptoms so that its patrons would be provided with due medical attention.
References:
* usrecallnews.com/2010/09/depuy-hip-replacement-recalled-asr-artificial-hip-systems.html
* nytimes.com/2010/08/27/business/27hip.html
* tga.gov.au/newsroom/btn-dupuy-recall.htm
In : Health