The world of artificial hips

To the Editor:

In 2011, I had an artificial hip implanted in my body. The operation was successful, however, as time went on, this prosthesis started to degrade, defined as “fretting”. This process resulting in a metallic dust, comprised of both chromium and cobalt, floating around in the vicinity of my hip. Starting in July fo 2018, I was experiencing some pain and discomfort in my hip, which slowly became more severe. At the same time, medical lab work indicated an increase of chromium and cobalt in the blood, circulating through my body.

This pain gradually increased to an “over ten” level. My hip surgeon suggested that I undergo revision surgery. Eventually, in January of this year, after having to wait five months for an operating room and my hip surgeon to get aligned, I did have revision surgery on my hip. The component causing the pain, which was one of five pieces in the prosthesis, was badly pitted and corroded. The manufacturer of this prosthesis knew of this problem and had issued a medical alert notice.

If you have had a hip implanted or are considering this, I would be happy to chat with you, from a patient’s perspective, about “the world of artificial hips”. I do not hold myself out, in any manner or fashion, to be qualified to talk about this subject in a medical manner, not one bit. On the other hand, because I made a bad choice in selecting medical help while experiencing severe hip pain, I had to wait eighteen months for revision surgery.

During this period of extreme discomfort, severe pain, elevated chromium and cobalt in my blood, I researched everything that I could find concerning hips, hip surgery, revision surgery, the effect of elevated cobalt in one’s blood, metallosis, why the prosthesis manufacturer, the hospital, or the hip surgeon who used this artificial hip did not notify me of a problem. Too, I researched the FDA’s role in circumstances such as hip recalls.

Maine is known as the state with the oldest citizenry and, as such, has many residents with hip implants, and knees, too. Most of these folks know very little about the artificial hip they rely on to get around, me included. That is, until I had to have revision surgery to repair a hip that was made with the wrong material — yes the wrong material. You see, medical device manufacturers use us as guinea pigs for testing their products.

They do: artificial knees, shoulders, artificial hips, pacemakers, and all these wonderful medical devices are not tested in humans, to see if and how they might work. In my research on artificial hips, I did not discover one example of a human having an implanted hip for the sole purpose of testing. This medical device development process naturally results in some trial and error, ergo, hips do need to be periodically replaced, as in revision surgery.

Of course, there is no cost if you would like to chat about “the world of artificial hips”, to learn more about hip implants, strictly from a patient’s viewpoint, with nothing to do on the medical end of things. My telephone number is 207-647-8196 and our conversation can be confidential.

If you don’t want to call, I leave you with two very important things to do: If you have had an artificial hip implanted in your body, who was the manufacturer? Do you know who made your hip? What are the serial numbers? If you don’t know, next step, find out. Secondly, go online to the FDA website and look for hip information. Most people tell me, “Oh, John, don’t worry about this hip business, the FDA handles all of that stuff”. Try finding hip prosthesis recall information on their website.

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