Quality disaster of Johnson & Johnson

Jamie Chung

By David Voreacos, Alex Nussbaum and Greg Farrell

In the fraction of a second after the explosion, Lance corporal Cody Perkins felt again, sitting in Humvee unit, wrapped in the blinding dust out of the water by the bomb. It is only when he was slammed with shattering force on the road who made a 20 - year - old U.S. Marine, he had ejected summer of vehicle wheelchair and thrown in the air.

Commander Perkins was killed in the incident of November 2005 outside Haditha, Iraq, and two other Marines were injured. Perkins has come far with abrasions, bruises and a fracture of the femur, or thigh bone. After surgery of emergency in Iraq, Mississippi native was transported to United States, where surgeons implanted screw merge fracture.

As a failed, leaving Perkins hampered. A military surgeon, Dr. Keith Holley, told him that his best option was a so-called prosthetic metal on metal hip made by DePuy orthopaedics, a unit of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). The hip new promoted as tough and durable – and therefore perfect for younger, physically active patients as Perkins. December 13, 2006, Dr. implanted Holley ASR XL acetabular system from DePuy in the soldier at the Naval Medical Center San Diego.

Perkins never regained mobility he had before the injury, but he was able to return to work full time. By end 2009, however, while he was working as a maritime investigator, at Camp Pendleton California he began - muscle fatigue, as a first step leading to shin splints, followed by pain in the hip beamed up to his back and knees. Soon, he was unable to sleep at night. "It is still uncomfortable," he said. "It is never a day completely free of pain."

The cause of the disorder, his current doctor Dr. Richard Conn said, is not a complication of his injury original but hip replacement. Perkins said he will have to have surgery surgical "review" in the ASR hip with an another implant replacement - a highly invasive procedure with a risk increased dislocation infection and joint on the road. It is also likely makes it incapable of marine rigorous annual physical fitness test.

"I wanted to take his retirement from the Marine Corps," said Perkins, who won two Purple Hearts. "But there was nothing that could happen... not a chance."

Now a Sergeant based in Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point North Carolina, Perkins joined more than 1,000 others are Johnson & Johnson over his implants DePuy ASR, damages for medical expenses, lost wages and pain and suffering.

On 26 August last year, DePuy announces a voluntary recall for two types of hips ASR, one leg of Perkins, but only after 93 000 were implanted patients around the world, including 37,000 in the U.S. J & J said that Depuy withdrew the hips for security reasonsWhile denying in court papers that the devices are defective. Announces a voluntary recall, she cited unpublished data for 2010 of the United Kingdom showing that within five years, 13% of the ASR XL hips failed and needed to be replaced, and 12 percent of the similar ASR Hip Resurfacing system failed. (The United States is not to gather numbers on the rates of failed hip). All types of implants are sensitive to the post-operative problems. Register of the Australia for mixed implants said 3.3% of all implants fail after five years. But stats DePuy cited for the callback - three to four times the standard - now unfortunately appear optimistic. March 9, the British Orthopaedic Association and the British society of hip said preliminary data put the ASR XL failure rate to the United Kingdom as high as 49% after six years.

The new report adds weight to the predictions of counsel for the plaintiffs that thousands more patients will introduce similar proceedings. Case after case described pain sufferers and immobilized by joint dislocations, infections and bone fractures. Their claims are supported by surgeons who say metal debris of hips, chromium cobalt alloy, causes the death of tissue around the joint and can increase the amount of metal ions in the blood to harmful levels. "There is so much metal, it is toxic to tissue," says Dr. William Jiranek, Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond and an orthopedic surgeon who has deleted the ASR hips.

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