Hip joint victim 'not surprised' at new revelations (From The Northern Echo)

Hip joint victim 'not surprised' at new revelations

2:16pm Friday 1st February 2013 in News By Barry Nelson, Health Editor

A RETIRED civil servant, who claims her life has been ruined by a faulty replacement hip joint, said she is not surprised at new revelations about the implants.

Margaret Davie, of West Auckland, County Durham, is convinced that her health was ruined by a DePuy Corail Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip joint given to her at the University Hospital of Hartlepool, in April 2008.

Last night, she said it was "not really a surprise" after it was disclosed during a court case in the United States that DePuy allegedly sold toxic hip implants used in thousands of operations in Britain for three years after they were warned that they were potentially hazardous.

Documents presented at the hearing in America appeared to show that DePuy was repeatedly warned about problems surgeons were seeing with British patients but failed to heed warnings.

As early as 2006, an orthopaedic surgeon in Belfast, was reporting problems with the DePuy ASR hip implant to the manufacturers.

A year later the surgeon, David Beverland, stopped using the product.

It is believed that more than 10,000 Britons have been fitted with metal-on-metal implants, which some scientists suspect can leak toxic metal into the patients bloodstream.

The ASR artificial hip was withdrawn in 2010, some years after the warnings were first made.

A report by the British Hip Society last year claimed the failure rate for metal-on-metal hip joints could be as high as 50 per cent after six years.

Mrs Davie was in so much pain from the first all metal joint that she had it taken out and replaced with a ceramic joint.

But her pain levels did nto improve and she subsequently suffered an agonising dislocation at home.

Since then, Mrs Davie has had four lots of surgery on her damaged right hip.

"It has devastated my life. I could cry about it right now," said Mrs Davie.

"I am terrible pain a lot of the time, in fact I have just been on to my local pain clinic. It is possible they may be able to do more but it involves more surgery and more injections and I dont know if I am prepared to take that step."

Mrs Davie is one of hundreds of British hip replacement patients who are taking joint legal action against DePuy.

Comments are closed on this article.