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Wright Profemur Hip Class Action Lawsuit

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Last week, the federal judge overseeing the Wright Medical hip implant MDL lawsuits named the plaintiffs’ co-lead and co-liaison counsel. These lawyers will help scores of other lawyers in directing the federal lawsuits involving hip implants.
The Wright Medical hip implant MDL is a “class action lawsuit for discovery” that was approved back in February. It consolidated lawsuits stemming from concerns about defective hip replacements from several hip manufacturers. The problem began with the DePuy hip implant recall. Plaintiffs’ hip replacement lawyers realized pretty quickly that researchers found that the problem was not just with DePuy, but with metal on metal hip implants. There are two other ongoing hip MDLs: the original, the DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip in the Northern District of Ohio, and another for the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip.
One big piece of evidence against these metal-on-metal implants is new. Two months ago, the Lancet, a top-notch British medical journal, published new failure rates of the metal-on-metal hip replacements using data from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales. The conclusion was grim: Metal-on-metal stemmed articulations give poor implant survival compared with other options. They concluded that these implants should not be used.


Wright Medical Profemur Total Hip System appears to be a big part of the problem. The Wright Medical Profemur Hip Implant lawsuits allege that Wright Medical’s Conserve hip replacements have an unreasonably high failure rate and that metal debris cause tissue injury requiring replacement surgery. Specifically, these Wright hip replacement suits allege:

  • The surface of the section of the neck that was inserted into the femoral stem was rough rather than polished thereby increasing the potential for failure
  • Micro fretting of the neck in the confined space in conjunction with corrosion resulted in a failure of the neck;
  • The portion of the neck that was inserted in the femoral stem was in a narrow, confined space, thereby increasing the potential for corrosion and failure;
  • Micro fretting of the neck in the confined space resulted in fatigue failure of the neck;
  • The neck combined with the rough surface of the portion of the neck that inserted into the femoral stem and the confined space that the portion of the neck that was inserted into the femoral stem was located combined to make the prosthesis unnecessarily prone to failure;
  • The prosthesis was unreasonably dangerous in that the distal taper on the neck and/or the slot on the head of the stem was not of design tolerance, thereby allowing excessive movement which caused fretting and fatigue failure.
  • The material used for the neck differed from the material used in the stem, thereby promoting corrosion and/or fretting;
  • The material used in the neck was more subject to fatigue failure than the material used in the other components of the prosthesis

If you or a loved one have suffered from a failed or fractured Profemur Z hip implant, get a free case review at 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line Profemur Z hip implant case evaluation.