When the pain in your hip became unbearable, you finally went to the doctor who determined that the joint was deteriorating. Your physician may have scheduled you for surgery right away, and you began the long, painful process of recovering from hip replacement surgery. This may have included wound treatment, medication and hours of physical therapy to learn how to use your new joint.
Your hope was that hip replacement surgery would allow you to walk without pain and perhaps regain some of the abilities you had lost. However, this was not to be, and now you are facing more surgery and more pain and suffering.
What problems are associated with hip replacements?
As you prepared for your hip replacement, your Texas doctor probably showed you diagrams or models of the hip and how it functions. A bone at the top of the leg has the shape of a ball and fits neatly into the hip socket. When arthritis or other conditions cause the cartilage between these two bones to deteriorate, the bones may rub together, creating pain when you walk. Through hip replacement surgery, your doctor implanted a new ball and socket, which should have restored your ability to walk pain-free.
If the replacement ball and socket used in your hip were both made of metal, usually chromium and cobalt, you may have experienced the following problems:
- Metal hip implants tend to corrode and fail only a few years after replacement surgery.
- The metal parts of the hip joint rub together creating friction.
- The friction releases metal shavings from the hip joint into your body.
- This condition, called metallosis, causes your hip to swell and may be extremely painful.
- You may suffer from blood poisoning due to the toxic metal particles in your body.
These issues arose in over 10,000 patients who, like you, received metal on metal hip implants. Investigations into the causes of the symptoms the patients suffered revealed a serious design flaw, which is why many patients filed lawsuits against the manufacturers of the metal hips, including Johnson and Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics.
Those who have successfully presented their cases in civil court have won compensation for their additional medical bills as well as for their pain and suffering. You may have already had or desperately need a revision, which is a second surgery to correct the damage from the first one. If you believe your suffering is the result of a poorly designed hip replacement, you have the right to seek legal assistance.