subject: Rottenstein Law Group Warns of Increased Risk of Cardiac Danger for Middle-Aged Men Who Have Received a Recalled DePuy ASR Hip Implant [print this page] Rottenstein Law Group Warns of Increased Risk of Cardiac Danger for Middle-Aged Men Who Have Received a Recalled DePuy ASR Hip Implant
RLG is warning that middle-aged men who have received a recalled DePuy ASR device might have an increased risk of cardiac impairment.
According to an article recently published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), "[e]arly failure of metal-on-metal hip arthroplasties is a current concern because tissue damage resulting from periprosthetic metallosis can compromise subsequent revision arthroplasty." In other words: Devices such as the DePuy ASR hip implants that don't last as long as intended and that shed metal ions into a recipient's tissues and bloodstream are in the news lately because the adverse reaction to the metal (cobalt, for example) can make surgery to replace the faulty device more complicated, even impossible.
Cobaltismcobalt poisoningcan result in tinnitus, vertigo, deafness, blindness, convulsions, headaches, hypothyroidism, and cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease). In fact, the addition of cobalt compounds to stabilize beer foam in Canadian beers led to widespread heart muscle disease and then, in turn, to the term "beer drinker's cardiomyopathy."
The author of the JBJS article, Dr. Stephen S. Tower, based his report on case studies of two patients at the Anchorage Fracture and Orthopedic Clinic and the Alaska WWAMI Biomedical Program, both in Anchorage. The patients were "fit, well, forty-nine year-old men" at the time that they received DePuy ASR devices. Both men required revision surgery to remove the ASR device previously implanted, and both men showed "neurological and cardiac symptoms resulting from elevated serum [blood] cobalt," according to the JBJS article. Moreover, the revision surgeries were "complicated by instability, a complication that has been reported to occur more frequently in hips that are revised because of metallosis."
Dr. Tower concludes his article by advising that "[s]urgeons need to be aware that the high serum cobalt level found in some patients with metal-on-metal hips may cause neurological or cardiac damage that is in part reversible with timely revision surgery."
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