Only five years after announcing a $4,400,000,000 settlement to resolve lawsuits involving defective knee and hip replacement systems, DePuy – a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson – is now facing additional lawsuits over their most recent knee replacement system, the DePuy Attune.
Marketed on release as the most costly and research-intensive medical device in DePuy’s development history, the Attune Knee System has since exhibited questionable results in terms of both the safety and effectiveness of the device. In recent months, dozens of adverse event reports by clinicians and DePuy have been filed with the Food and Drug Administration’s Medical Device Adverse Event Reporting Database. Moreover, a recently published study in the Journal of Knee Surgery noted an unusually-high rate of revisions due to premature failures of the Attune Knee System. The authors further attributed the failures to design features inherent in the device, namely that the tibial portion of the system fails to adequately integrate into the tibial surface of the bone. As a result, the device becomes destabilized and/or loosened, and typically will require additional surgery to resolve.
Thousands of patients have been implanted with the Attune Knee System to date.
