Potentially Defective Medical Device, ‘Durom Cup’ Has Production Suspended
Zimmer Holdings, which is the country’s largest producer of orthopedic devices, has said it will suspend sales of a potentially defective medical product, the Durom cup, which is an artificial hip component that some doctors have said is failing in patients at a high rate. According to an article in the New York Times, the Durom cup has been implanted in more than 12,000 patients since it was first sold in the United States in 2006. Zimmer’s own data and interviews with doctors shows that hundreds of patients might need early replacement of this component in the coming years because it is failing and not working the way it was supposed to.
Zimmer is not admitting that their product is defective. Of course not. But they concluded in their own investigation that even some experienced surgeons are finding it difficult to implant because it calls for a higher degree of precision. Blame the problems on the doctors. Company officials say they plan to resume sales of the Durom cup once specialized training for doctors has begun. We’ll see.
The issue with the Durom cup came up in April when Los Angeles surgeon Dr. Lawrence Dorr, issued a public warning to other orthopedists about the cup failing in his patients and the problems they were experiencing. Dr. Dorr has said that the cup is simply a badly designed defective product and that he wouldn’t consider reusing it on his patients.
Zimmer’s explanation for why this product is failing seems curious to me. It is strange that company officials are saying that even experienced orthopedists lack the precision it takes to implant the Durom cup. It seems to me, as Dr. Dorr says, that this product is just poorly designed. Company officials should seriously consider putting the defective medical product back on the market only after they have redesigned it and made it a better product. I don’t believe it would become a better product even after they have given these doctors “specialized training” about how to implant the cup.
If you or someone you know has suffered problems relating to the Durom cup implant, please call my office, I’d like to hear about it.
