Wright Profemur Z Hip – Is an 11.2% Failure Rate Too High?

Substantial Failure Rate
Countless patients encounter hip problems. As a result, they often turn to hip implants to alleviate their pain and help them move around without lingering pain or discomfort. Recently, however, hip implants have been creating additional health problems rather than mitigating them. The DePuy hip recall has been well documented, with one in eight patients requiring revision surgery. But DePuy isn’t the only company who has manufactured potentially defective hip implants. According to a recent study from the Australian Joint Registry, the Wright Medical Technologies Profemur Z hip implant has created substantial hardships for patients. In fact, at the three-year interval the statistics reveal an 11.2% failure rate.

Lawsuits
The failure rate has not gone unnoticed. There have been lawsuits filed against Wright recently. Among those, a Colorado man filed suit alleging that his Wright Profemur hip system failed after three and a half years, resulting in revision surgery. The man claims in the lawsuit that the Wright hip replacement failed due to a defective and negligent design.

Hip Implant Design
The Wright model, however, wasn’t supposed to create any problems. Instead, it was supposed to be an evolutionary design. The Wright website says, “The unique modular neck component allows soft tissue balancing and easy restoration of the hip joint center of rotation. This modular approach to implant design provides surgeons with unsurpassed options for primary and revision hip surgery.”

The implant was supposed to be an ideal implant for minimally invasive surgery. In fact, the FDA approved the model. The questions, however, are in light of the problems associated with the model, why was it approved by the FDA and why hasn’t a recall been mandated? The answers to those questions remain to be seen.

Conclusion
Hip implants can greatly improve the quality of life for patients. That improvement, however, only occurs if the implants are designed correctly. To be sure, implants which aren’t properly designed can be counterproductive. In fact, they can add to people’s health problems rather than solve them by requiring early revision surgery and other complications. A hip implant should not cause you more problems than you already deal with on a daily basis. If it has, you should make sure this is reported to the FDA and that the manufacturer is held accountable.

Product Identification Notice: In any of our web pages referring to Zimmer NexGen products, these pages are intended to provide information about and are referring to the same Zimmer products that were identified by Dr. Berger in his presentation and study entitled "The High Failure Rate of a High-Flex Total Knee Arthroplasty Design," and were written about in the NY Times article titled "Surgeon vs. Knee Maker: Who’s Rejecting Whom?," and that are reported in the FDA MAUDE database, where reports involving the Zimmer NexGen CR Flex Cementless or Porous Femoral component can be found and also those products associated with aseptic loosening of the Zimmer MIS Tibial Component that led certain doctors to discontinue its use, and to recommend discontinued use of this product in primary TKA until the etiology of the high early failure rate of this implant is determined. See prospective studies comparing the results of the Zimmer MIS Tibial Component using conventional and minimally invasive exposures as well as comparing fixation with different types of bone cement as described in Early Aseptic Loosening With a Precoated Low-Profile Tibial Component A Case Series. Not all Zimmer NexGen products are involved in our investigations and lawsuits.