Some 5,000 Australians could have avoided a painful and costly revision surgery if Australian regulators had acted to recall the DePuy ASR hip implant when it first knew its defective design was responsible for a high early-failure rate. According to a report from Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, about 5,000 Australians had the now-recalled DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implanted after the country’s Therapeutic Goods Administration first learned of solid evidence linking the medical device to a high failure rate. Touted as having a lifespan of at least 15 years, many ASR implants are failing after just a few years.
