The U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging held a hearing on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s role in protecting (or not protecting) patients’ safety in the course of the medical device approval process. During the hearing, the committee examined adverse effects caused by the defective ASR XL Acetabular System market by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics as an advanced, more-durable implantantable hip replacement.
The Senate committee heard from a patient affected by the Depuy hip device recall named Katie Korgaokar, as well as some leading patient safety advocates, including Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Research Center for Women and Families
If you would like to view the Committee hearing, click on this link to listen to the Senators talk about the defective DePuy hip device. Korgaokar’s testimony begins at the 32:05 mark.
Korgaokar described herself as one of the “unlucky 96,000 patients” who was seriously hurt by the faulty DePuy hip implant. Unfortunately, the story she relays to the Committee is quite common. She was told by her doctor that the DePuy ASR hip device was state-of-the-art and was a great device to help patients with serious hip problems.
Sadly, the claims about the effectiveness of the DePuy hip device were completely inaccurate and the device, for many patients, needed to be removed and the patients had to undergo another risky and painful hip replacement surgery.
If you or a loved one had a DePuy ASR hip replacement and are concerned that the device is defective, consider speaking to a lawyer about your legal options.
For additional information about the DePuy ASR hip implant recall, check out this blog.
PA