The Cochran Firm Legal Blog

With the Johnson & Johnson/DePuy hip implant recall still in the news, a new effort to track injuries from hip implants and other joint replacements is attracting serious attention. The idea behind the American Joint Replacement Registry is to catch problems with surgical implants before they lead to costly defective product recalls, medical device injuries, and product liability lawsuits.

Big manufacturers of joint implants, including J&J, Zimmer Holdings, and Stryker Corp, are backing the new registry, hoping to avoid future harsh regulation from the FDA as well as defective product lawsuits. Similar registries are already in place in the United Kingdom and other countries, but no such joint implant registry currently exists in the United States. In fact, it was the UK registry that spotted the increased rates of revision surgery stemming from DePuy's ASR hip implants, helping prompt the massive DePuy hip implant recall in August.

The American Joint Replacement Registry will begin this month as a pilot program with fifteen hospitals participating and a goal of covering ninety percent of the thousands of hospitals that perform joint replacement surgery in the United States. This would make the new registry the biggest of its kind, covering more joint replacement procedures than all other registries put together.

If you or someone you love has been injured because of a defective DePuy hip implant or another joint replacement surgery, please contact The Cochran Firm today to find out about your legal right to defective product injury compensation.